Sonic the Hedgehog: Metal Memory
by Pastey
Summary: Robotropolis has fallen silent. The Freedom Fighters move to strike in this apparent window of opportunity only to find themselves under assault from villain thought long since defeated. No OC's
1. Chapter 1: Calm Before the Storm

Sonic the Hedgehog: Metal Memory  
a fanfic by Pastey

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It has been eight years since the survivors of Dr. Robotnik's invasion and capture of Mobotropolis fled to the refuge of Knothole Village, and three years since the Freedom Fighters began to strike back.

Battles have been won and lost, but the war still rages on. Sonic's roboticized uncle, Sir Charles, has been freed from his enslavement and for the past year has been assisting the Freedom Fighters as both spy and robotic engineer.

In the past week the renamed city of Robotropolis has become unusually quiet and the freedom fighters have been conducting reconnaissance missions to find out why. Meanwhile, a breakthrough is about to be made in Rotor's workshop…

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Chapter 1: Calm before the Storm

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"There's a chance that this isn't going to work." warned Rotor from behind a control station in his work shop. "I'm positive it won't hurt you, let alone kill you, but it may simply not work."

Tails was undaunted by the metal cap, despite its striking resemblance to the infamous "lightning crowns" of Downunda prison's execution ward. He gleefully removed it from its charging holder and strapped it onto his head. The wire-draped dome forced him to fold his ears back and down, which was slightly uncomfortable, but well worth it in his mind. Once the cap was snug, he plopped into the armchair on the testing pad. "Let's go! Fire it up! I can't wait to sort through my own memories!" chimed the fox while bouncing in his seat.

Rotor couldn't help but laugh at the sight of the twelve year old boy wearing an obscenely large metal bowl on his head while fidgeting around. He stifled his chuckles so he could speak. "Don't you think you should wait for Uncle Chuck? This wouldn't have even been possible if it weren't for—"

"Oh, nonsense…" the raspy robotic voice of Uncle Chuck interrupted, "…You two egg-heads would have solved this puzzle just as well without me getting in the way!" As Sir Charles's metal feet clanked onto the steel plate floor of the workshop, Tails leaned out the side of the chair and turned his head as far as he could.

"Hi Uncle Chuck!" he said while waving happily. "Glad you made it in time!"

Charles came up to the young test subject's side with a smile creaking out beneath his metal whiskers. "That's some handsome head-gear, m'boy!" Rotor gave the old veteran a nod and a simple hello. Charles's attention shifted to the lavender walrus.

"Sonic and Bunnie still aren't back from their scouting mission in Robotropolis, but I'm sure they wouldn't want to keep you lads waiting. By all means if you're ready to begin, do so! I'm dying to see if this actually works."

Rotor nodded and flipped the power to the monitoring system. He then began fiddling with the settings for the device. "Like I was telling Tails earlier, there is always a chance that something won't work, but I see no reason why it shouldn't. We all know that roboticizing technology can transfer memories of an organic Mobian brain into the disk space of a synthetic Robian hard drive. The cap essentially does the same thing, only instead of following through with the roboticizing process; it just copies the information in the brain and uploads it into a completely separate hard drive. Memories, personality, old habits… everything." Rotor stopped for a moment to regard the Robian hard drive on the receiving pedestal.

Tails grew silent as Chuck offered it a mournful gaze and began to speak. "I didn't know him before Robotnik took over. He might have been someone's brother, or someone's father… some poor soul's son. I only ever knew him as unit H-55-935, even after I was freed and began spying in Robotnik's factories. Now, because of a freak electrical discharge that could have just as easily wiped my drive, nobody will ever really know who he was."

Rotor gave a dejected sigh. "His death won't be in vane. Using his drive, I can learn how to sort through and resurface an individual's personality buried beneath archives of Robotnik's brain-washing software. He will free hundreds, maybe even thousands of Robians from their mental prisons. It's a huge step in taking back our world, Charles."

The cobalt Robian shrugged off the melancholy overtones. "I suppose you're right, Boomer."

Tails giggled whilst the walrus rolled his eyes in dismay. "Please, Uncle Chuck, I haven't been called Boomer since I was six."

Uncle Chuck quickly covered his mouth with his hand in feigned shock. "Sorry about that, sonny! Old habit."

The young fox in the chair could no longer manage his anxiety. "Hey, we gonna copy my brain or what?!" He proclaimed with both hands placed firmly on the metal dome.

Charles took a place next to Rotor behind the control panel. The walrus looked up, calling to Tails. "Ready over there, Tails?!" The boy stretched a mile-wide smile and nodded eagerly, clutching the arms of the chair as if he were expecting it to blast off. With that, Rotor pushed a small green button and immediately the headset on Tails began to hum. As it did so, Tails seemed to loose his fix on the control panel and his gaze steadily wandered upward vacantly. The hum slowly turned into a high pitch whine before a bright green flash escaped from around Tails' head under the cap. This seemed to release the boy from his brief moment of hypnosis, leaving him a bit dizzy. A shake of the head and a rub of an eye and Tails was back to normal.

"Was that it?! Did it work?!" Tails asked frantically from the chair, motioning to Rotor whether or not he could take off the helmet yet.

Rotor flipped a few switches and signaled back at Tails that he could indeed remove the helmet. "We'll know if it worked in a little bit. It's in the middle of uploading all of your data into the hard drive. I'd imagine this won't take too long, especially since you're so young. If we were to do this with someone Uncle Chuck's age however, we could be here for hours."

The metal hedgehog crossed his arms while turning to stare at Rotor. "I'm not THAT old…" he grimaced.

"Oh come on, you had it coming after that Boomer comment!" laughed Rotor before returning to his naturally analytical self. "It'll probably take thirty or forty minutes at this rate."

Tails' face went from elated to horrified. "THIRTY MINUTES?!" cried the fox.

"Sorry bud! You could go get something to eat from Rosie if you want…" Rotor stopped, noticing that he was quite hungry himself. "Actually if you don't mind, could you bring something back for me too? I missed breakfast and I'm famished."

Tails didn't really want to leave the shop, but he didn't want to just wait around doing nothing for thirty whole minutes either. "Alright then, I'll be back in a sonic-second!" he announced before dashing out the door as fast as he could.

Charles laughed lightly as he watched the door slowly swing shut. "I think more of my nephew is rubbing off on him than is healthy."

Rotor finished tweaking the controls and turned to Charles. "I wouldn't worry. He's got the rest of Knothole rubbing off on him to balance it out." he remarked with a grin.

As tails trotted across the commons of Knothole, a familiar sound caught his attention. He skidded to a halt and spun around to see Sonic doing the same thing, only over a distance of about fifty feet and kicking up a huge dust cloud.

"I'm baaack!" called the blue hedgehog to anyone who could hear him. As he noticed Tails running up to meet him, his trademark smirk moved up his muzzle. "Hey buddy! Glad to see you still have your head!" he joked while messing up Tails' hair. "I guess that means the experiment was a success, huh?"

Tails smiled while fixing his hair. "We haven't finished yet! My brain patterns are still being uploaded into H-55's old hard drive. There's probably terabytes of data that's going into—" Sonic interrupted with a confused noise while scratching his head behind his ear.

"You lost me at brain-patterns and hard-data… tera-disks…" he trailed off. Sonic noticed Tails' expression of disappointment and perked back up. "I'll come see it when it's finished, but first I have to go with Bunnie to tell Sally about the mission."

Tails' normal joyful face returned. "Ok Sonic. I'll meet you in Rotor's lab!" As Tails began running off towards Rosie's kitchen he heard the sound of someone else returning home; jets powering down and metal limbs making contact with hard dirt. "Hi Bunnie!" Tails called while waving.

She waved back with her left, non-metallic hand. "Hi there sugah!" she answered before turning to Sonic who stood tapping his foot waiting for her. They began walking toward the meeting hut. "I know you're the fastest guy on two feet, sugah-hog, but I can't help but feel a lil' let down every time you beat me back home!" explained Bunnie in her southern drawl.

Sonic chuckled a bit. "Hey don't worry about it. All the same though, I wouldn't be holding my breath for a win any time soon." He bragged.

Bunnie rolled her eyes at Sonic and moved her roboticized hand to brush her droopy ear out of her face. As it came near her head though, the metal arm jerked all on its own, causing Bunnie to clock herself in the temple with her own knuckles. The cybernetic rabbit would have fallen over from the blow had Sonic not been paying attention and caught her. He held her up by putting her faulty arm around his shoulders.

"Holy cow, are you okay? I think I heard that bounce off your skull…" asked Sonic while trying to get a look at the damage.

She gritted her teeth in pain while cradling her head with her organic arm then managed to grunt out a response. "My robot-limbs have been actin' like they out to kill me lately. I really need to have Rotor check me up." She loosed her metal arm from Sonic's shoulders and continued walking, despite his offers to just bring Sally to her so she could sit down for a bit. Holding her head, Bunnie and Sonic continued to the meeting hut.

Make-shift and multi-purpose was the theme around which the entire village was built and Knothole's meeting hut was no exception. It served as town hall, classroom, dance hall, and from time to time, war room. This particular structure was the largest in the village, with a wide roof supported by three massive fir trees which grew in nearly a strait line. Additional rafter work allowed the floor space of the meeting hut to be completely free of obstruction other than the three trunks. Today the building was empty, save for a rusty-red haired figure sitting alone at one of the long tables. As the blue hedgehog pushed the front doors open and entered with his cybernetic companion, Sally Acorn took notice and placed her personal computer, Nicole, on the table.

"Whenever any of us come home from that awful place I give thanks…" she stopped upon noticing Bunnie holding her throbbing head. "Oh my gosh, were you attacked?" inquired Sally in a very concerned voice.

Bunnie frowned and sighed. "Not unless you mean attacked by myself." she answered while shaking her mechanical arm as if to keep it limber. "I can trust swat-bots more than my limbs these days." Sally gave her arm a glance and continued. "I really hope that's an exaggeration. We should get you to Rotor's shop after this."

Sonic unfolded his arms so that he could use them to lean forward on the table. "Speaking of swat-bots, we saw next to no troop movement in Robotropolis… again. The only clunkers we saw were patrols and they were really deep in; almost nowhere further Ro-butt-nik's command tower."

Bunnie added to the brief. "Today I was spotted by a hover-cam. I went 'round a corner without checking and bam; lil' floating eye about THIS far from my nose." She held her left hand about five inches from her face like a wall. "I grabbed then smashed it to bits in a heart beat, but I know it saw me. All the same though, no alarms! Nothing, not even one chrome dome comes a-runnin'. It's like nobody's at the farm."

Sally leaned with her back against the wall with her arms crossed. She looked up at the ceiling of the hut in thought for a few seconds before speaking again. "The only time we've seen Robotnik's grip loosen like this was after the E.V.E. incident. We thought his creation had wiped him out before continuing on to travel the galaxy but it turned out that he had simply been transported elsewhere. That absence only lasted a few days though, and when he came back everything went back to its horribly normal self." She threw a glance to Sonic. "This could be the best shot we've had in years to do some critical, irreversible damage to his operation."

Sonic smirked mischievously at the notion. "Now you're speaking my language!" he cheered while shaking a fist.

Sally quickly cut him off. "HOWEVER," she started loudly, "it is also very likely that he is simply staging this whole thing. The previous mission showed us that there aren't any extra robots in the scrap dumps or the slag plants. It's not like all those units just up and disappeared. This could very easily be a trap for us, though he'd be taking more risks than we normally see him take with this one."

Sonic shrugged indifferently and began pacing as Bunnie stepped forward. "Trap or no, we've got ourselves an opportunity here Sally-girl. We should probably do something a lil' more… offensive… than sneakin' around back-alleys 'n such." Sally nodded in agreement as she pulled away from the wall and picked up Nicole.

After bending over to clip her little machine to the top of her left boot she stood up, brushing her hair back behind her ears with one hand (a maneuver that almost always caught Sonic's undivided attention). "We'll put a plan together with the whole team tonight. Right now though, Rotor, Charles, and our little engineer Tails have cooked up something we should check out." With that, the briefing was over and the trio proceeded to leave the meeting hut together.

At another end of the village Tails was exiting Rosie's kitchen holding a couple plates of tuna-fish sandwich bites, cuisine that both he and Rotor were quite fond of. Following close behind him was none other than Antoine D'Coolette, dressed as close to casual as he ever got in his Royal Guard uniform. He raised an eyebrow to the fox's selection of lunch, holding one hand behind him while gesturing with the other as he began his commentary.

"A bit on zee, how do you say... or-ni-dairy, side oui?" He asked in his heavy French accent.

Tails answered over his shoulder, "I think you mean 'or-di-nary', An'twan." elongating each syllable so that his verbally defunct friend could easily understand the correction. The effort, however, soon seemed to be in vain.

"Oui, zis eez what I am saying! Or-ni-dairy, non?" insisted the coyote while thumbing his chin. "One of zeese days I will have to prepare zee escargot for you, Tails. Eet will leave you... wizout zee speech."

Tails scrunched his face and produced an overly dramatic gagging noise. "Yuck, I'm not eating snails! And before you say it, I'm never going to try frog legs either."

Antoine protested. "No cuisses de grenouilles?! I swear to you zere eez nothing better!" Tails would have none of it though, shaking his head to himself. The vain coyote gave up, opting to instead straiten out his blue uniform and fix his hair. "Fine zen, more for moi." He moved ahead of Tails as they reached Rotor's shop so he could open the door for the full-handed fox.

Inside, just about all the Freedom Fighters were already there. Sonic, Sally, Bunnie, Rotor, and Sir Charles were all crammed where they could fit themselves around the monitor next to the receiving pedestal. It was Charles who noticed the door open first. "Great timing, the data has just finished transferring." Tails gave a gleeful hurray as he hurried over to the group, finding a place between Sonic and Rotor.

Rotor noted the plates of tuna-fish sandwiches. "Ah, our stomachs think as one!" he joked, taking a snack off one of the plates that Tails set on the monitor table. After downing a bite, he addressed the group. "Alright! So, you guys all know that the three of us have been toiling away in this lab for the better part of a year now working on this little number. Well we finally have something to show for it! Tails has very generously shared the memories of his entire life for the first live test. We should be able to display anything he's seen and heard but there isn't a media format to present things like taste, touch or smell. At least not yet anyway." He stopped in the middle of his presentation to ponder his last sentence. "That gives me another project idea..."

Sonic snapped his fingers a couple times to get Rotor's attention. "Hello? Mobius to Rotor! The brain thing?" he reminded him. Rotor quickly responded to the wake up call.

"Oh yeah, as I was saying;" continued Rotor "we should be able to see and hear Tails' memories through this monitor station. So without any further holdups, lets see what Tails remembers."

A few strokes on the keyboard and the monitor was on. For a few seconds, all that came through were jumbled patterns of color and the garbled sounds of what might have been voices. Soon enough though the first clear images started to appear...


	2. Chapter 2: Orphans of War

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Chapter 2: Orphans of War

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The first streams of clear feed were of walls. Pastel yellow and blue stripes ran up and down the walls of a well lit nursery, and the slow peaceful chimes of a mobile could be heard very clearly. Red biplanes hanging from the music machine came into focus next, softly swinging as they followed each other in a circle. A tiny hand weakly began extending toward the little replicas before the image suddenly became garbled and undecipherable.

The music of the mobile could still be heard faintly, though it was being drowned out by the sporadic bits and pieces of what sounded like voices. Images appeared in split second intervals, barely stopping long enough to make anything out; a picture of a big armchair, red shoes, a story book, bright white sheets fluttering wildly on a clothes line... nothing entirely coherent. Then, as quickly as the chaotic signals started, they ceased leaving behind yet another clear feed.

An open doorway could be seen from the back of a posh living room, and a sound comparable to that of waves through a concrete wall filled the audio output. The light from the other side of the door was blinding, making the light tans of the furniture seem dull and gray. Despite the harshness of this light the perspective of the young fox rushed towards it, the view bouncing atop the wobbly trot of a three year old. As white engulfed the screen the steady roar of the ocean suddenly vanished, giving way to the voices of children. Slowly the white veil dissipated, revealing an expanse of green grass with the towers of a glistening ivory city overlooking them. On the grass was a familiar blue figure.

One hedgehog, jumping around wildly and moving at a rate that the view had a hard time keeping focus on. The blue blur abruptly stopped in front of of the view looking directly into it. His lips started moving and noise did indeed come out, but it wasn't understandable as if it were muffled by several pillows. Only every now and then did a distinct word come through. "Hey hey hey" sung in ascending notes, "two tails?" and "Sonic!" were made audible. The older boy turned around as if to call to someone though there were no muffles to go along with it. He turned back to the view and continued to speak. "Palace garden" were the last understandable words before the image jumped ahead.

A girl sitting on a stone bench appeared. The songs of birds could be heard over the noise of the fountain that trickled behind her. Oddly enough everything that wasn't within ten feet of her seemed to vanish into a sea of silver mist. Her attention was directed elsewhere as she sat leaned back with her arms behind her for support. Her rusty red hair caught the sun just as well as the green jewel she wore on a band across her forehead, and her pale green dress flowed smoothly to her knees. The water and the birds steadily became silent as she turned her head towards the view. "Hi there!" she called. "Are you with Sonic?"

The second she stopped speaking the images and audio became confused and disorderly again. Indistinct pieces of sentences were paired with momentary images of familiar people and things. Antoine blubbering, Rotor baiting a hook, piggy back rides with Sonic and the sound of whipping wind. Occasionally, the face of a grown-up would surface. Most often was the smiling face of a female fox who's image seemed to visibly emit kindness and love. Similarly, the shape of an adult male fox could be seen, though it was nondescript and particularly fleeting. There also was an old hedgehog with a bristly white mustache, and a man who appeared only with the girl from the fountain.

Every time he showed up it was the same image, never a different one. He'd walk up to the girl on the bench, take her hand and walk away with her skipping at his side. This image was surprisingly clear amongst the mixed up bits and pieces. His royal blue gown could be seen with such detail that the individual shapes of the medals that adorned it could all be unmistakably defined. His fur was brown and tan like the little girl's and he wore a jeweled band across his forehead just as she did, though his was quite a bit more extravagant with added height. His face seemed cold and stiff up until he looked to the girl and took her hand. He could then be seen smiling and speaking to her as he turned back to the direction from which he came with her, though the words were muted entirely. The jumbled assortment of faces and voices continued for a few seconds before coming to a dead stop.

The image was almost pitch black, but heavy breathing could be heard. The cover of darkness revealed itself to be a thick comforter as it slid off the top of the view. The posh living room was lit by a single dim floor lamp near the once blinding doorway. The perspective slowly wandered toward one of the darkened windows while a child's voiced called out loudly. "Mommy!" The child's call was met only with silence. Still inching towards the window, the frightened voice called out again nearly in tears. "Mommy?!" Again, no reply. Everything seemed to stand still for a minute as the view hesitated to approach the window any further. The rushing sound of deep breaths were becoming smaller and more quivered, and the very dust particles in the air seemed to cease their twirling dances. A tiny gulp broke the stillness and an equally small voice attempted to call out once more. "Mom--"

Before the voice could finish, it was suddenly and violently drowned out by a long horrible roar. The darkened window was instantly illuminated with a hazy orange glow that formed beams through the hanging dust, and the very room seemed to shake. As suddenly as it happened the view darted to ground level and was instantly covered in the darkness of the comforter once again. Despite the presence of the thundering noise from outside, frantic terrified sobbing could be faintly heard. The gobs of black shifted so that a peephole to the living room formed. As the outside image became clear it zeroed in on the window, where the orange light began to grow dim. Following suit the roar began to subside, only to reveal the sounds of panicked shouts and screams from outside the house.

From this spot, all that could be seen in the window were occasional red flashes coupled with a sharp electrical noises and screaming people. The longer this went on, the brighter the flashes and the louder the noises became. New voices began to sound off, deep lifeless monotone voices speaking in imperfect unison resulting in a sort of echo effect. Even from outside a few of their words could be understood. "Stop", "under arrest" and a name: "Lord Robotnik".

Another loud noise cracked the atmosphere, this time from the door. The sound of splintering wood and creaking metal beckoned the peephole to shift itself to the end of the room. As the view settled a large figure became visible in the doorway. A large man made of metal with a bowl shaped head and an eerie red bar of light where his face should have been. The dim light of the floor lamp danced across the figure's edges giving it a shape in beyond its silhouette. It raised a strait arm capped by a downward facing fist parallel to its shoulder. Atop its wrist a flashlight mounted next to an ominous smoking tube clicked on and began to point around the room. As the light progressed methodically across the surfaces of the furniture, it threw pitch black shadows upon the walls which stretched and shrunk at the light's whim. Inevitably, the light directed itself towards the view and stopped it's journey across the living room.

The peephole closed shut quickly and the sounds of breathing were huffed up into one enormous held breath. In the absence of the rushing air, the only things that were left to hear were the sounds of a pounding heart moving blood faster than it ever had before, and the gut wrenching sound of metal feet drawing nearer. The heaving whine of hydraulics and the cruel clank of steel on granite tile grew louder with each step as did the mad beating of that terrified heart. At last the feet of the machine seemed to stop just outside the black veil and as doom could be heard reaching downward towards the floor, a loud clatter from outside rang out.

The sound of metal crashing against the pavement outside was sufficient to send the view shooting strait up off the floor with a shriek. As the blotchy dark of the comforter flew off, the view was now exposed and the entirety of the situation was made clear. The robot was indeed about to rip off the comforter itself when the ruckus from outside the house diverted its attention. From this close, every screw in its chassis, every nick in it's silver paint job and every dent in its armor was visible. The metal monster seemed caught between the startled cry from the view and the confusion outside. Before it had time to do anything a blue flash streaked in through the busted door and struck the mechanical intruder in the back, causing it to lose balance and fall over and behind the field of vision. The sound of shattering glass and collapsing metal limbs broke out as it pulverized a glass coffee table on its way to the floor.

Left standing was the figure of the young blue hedgehog. His attention met the perspective and immediately he was at its side, helping it up onto his shoulders. Once aboard, the view bolted across the room and out the door at unbelievable speed. Lights melted together in long streaks and sounds of the surroundings were shortened to quick second long bursts as the hedgehog made his way through a neighborhood and out into a field. Once atop a grassy knoll he stopped, quickly offloading his terrified passenger. Looking around quickly, the image locked on another child who was already waiting; Princess Sally, the girl from the fountain. Sonic guided the unsteady perspective over to the girl's side and began whispering. "Stay here, stay together, stay quiet." he said softly while holding a finger in front of his lips. Then, as quickly as he appeared, he sprinted off towards the city. As the view followed him, a sight unlike any other presented itself.

On the horizon the majestic white and gold towers of Castle Acorn were no longer visible. In their place rose billowing pillars of smoke, lit from beneath by a horrendous blaze. The orange haze cast upon the rising plume resulted in a pulsating, mesmerizing dance of orange and black which stretched upward and outward across the evening sky. No moon, no stars... only the thick choking black of a ruined city filled the atmosphere. The illuminated columns of smoke cast light on the city surrounding it as well. Faintly lit, the back lighted silhouettes of countless people could be seen moving in single file lines, overseen by more of the hulking metal enforcers. They were being corralled into large hovering transport containers which when full flew off towards the burning center of the city, leaving a wispy blue plasma trail behind them. Occasionally one of the little black shapes would dart out of line, only to be gunned to pieces seconds later by red laser fire from several guards.

The view became shaky, unable to look towards the horrific sight any longer. Quickly it turned to Sally at its side, burying itself into her now sooty dress. The screen went dark and all that prevailed over the speakers were the soft sobs and sniffling of a frightened child. A moment later colors returned to the screen as the view shifted upwards to look at the princess' face. Her gaze was directed towards the burning palace grounds, tears flowing freely from her eyes but not so much as a hiccup escaping her lips. Noticing the stare from the view, she looked down. A forced smile quivered its way onto her face as she whispered downward. "Everything will be okay. We'll all go home soon." she assured her companion, wiping the tears from her eyes.

Just then the blue streak returned, coming to a halt with a high pitched screech as his heels dug into the ground. Off of his back crawled a shaking, frantic coyote clutching a sheathed saber under his arm. "Papa!" he cried. "He eez going to need his sword! I must get it to him! I MUST!" The blue hedgehog deftly threw his hand over the older boy's mouth to muffle his panicked cries. He quickly warned the gibbering boy to be silent before dashing back towards the city. In his absence, the sound of the metal blade rattling inside of its sheathe in Antoine's shaking grip seemed to prolong the minutes. Soon Sonic returned though he was moving slower than before. As he came to a stop he collapsed, causing the large form of Rotor to roll off of his back and land in the grass with an "oof". The hedgehog was exhausted from carrying his big friend but still attempted to get to his feet to head back into the city.

Before he could take off again, he glanced down the hill and promptly dove to the ground below the grass line. "Get down!" he called back to his friends in a strained whisper. The view from Sally's arms hurried with her as she dove onto her belly. Off to the side Rotor could be seen grabbing Antoine by the shoulder whilst covering his mouth to bring him to the ground without him sounding off a startled yelp. For what seemed like hours the view stayed down near the healthy brown soil, well below the swaying tops of the tall grass. Suddenly a familiar voice called out from in front of the group.

"Oh my heavens, there you all are!" exclaimed Rosie in her warm but frail voice. The view darted up from the ground along with the heads of everyone else to see their nanny taking hurried steps towards them up the hill. Without another second the frightened children all swarmed around her hugging her legs, never as thankful to see a grown-up as they were right then. She moved to the ground on her knees so she could properly hug and comfort her young charges. She cast a worried glance to the blue hedgehog. "Your uncle told me to get all of you to Knothole Village. Don't you worry about him dear, he will meet us there."

The children all looked back at the city they grew up in. Embers from the towers were already starting to faintly sprinkle down around them like glowing snow. Rosie insisted that the children quickly follow her again before the view shifted away from Mobotropolis. The sound of feet in the grass and collective panting drummed out of the speakers and the image of a dark forest came closer and closer. As the black of the Great Forest's canopy erased the sky, the sound fizzled out and the monitor turned off leaving behind nothing but a shrinking white dot in it's center and the reflections of its viewers.


	3. Chapter 3: Technical Difficulties

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Chapter 3: Technical Difficulties

* * *

The group remained silent for a brief moment as they stared into the motionless screen. Any lingering sentiments of nostalgia regarding their childhood were quickly fading as each personally recalled the events of that fateful night. As if waking from a dream, Sonic was alerted by a sniffle at his side. He looked over to see Tails quickly trying to clear his eyes, though his face clearly showed that he had been quietly trying to keep back the tears for some time. Sonic placed a comforting arm around Tails' shoulder while Bunnie cleared her throat to speak.

"I know I wasn't there n'all but… Ah'm fairly sure that there's a few missin' years in between then n'now." remarked the rabbit while scratching the back of her head.

Rotor mumbled to himself while his fingers started dancing across the buttons and keys of the monitor station. A moment went by before he let out a miserable sigh. "I don't know why, but the program I created to read this data is locking up when it tries to progress any further into the transferred memory. It needs to be modified to read the rest of it and that will definitely take me a while to do."

Little by little the others began to step away from the monitor console to give Rotor some space to work, all except for Bunnie who gently tapped his shoulder from behind. With a worried smile on her face she whispered to the troubled walrus.

"Ah'm sorry to pry you from yer project Rotuh, but could y'all have a look at my cybernetics? They're on the fritz and I need to be a hundred percent for the next mission into Robotropolis."

Seeing a far more solvable problem than the memory reading program, Rotor rose to his feet. "Uh if you don't mind guys, Bunnie and I are going to need a little mechanic-patient confidentiality for a bit."

Sally threw Rotor a nod. "We'll be planning our next move against Robotnik later tonight. How long do you think you'll need?" the ground squirrel asked.

"I don't imagine it could take long, though I won't know till I have a look at her."

Bunnie shook her head and made a dismissing gesture with her robotic hand. "Oh I really don't mind, we can hold the meeting in here while Rotuh works his magic on mah limbs."

The walrus glanced at Bunnie. "I'll take that as an official waver of your privacy rights." he teased while moving into the far corner of the workshop. Lights flickered on revealing a sectioned chair elevated on a circular metal pedestal. This slightly reclined seat had a rest for every limb so that each may be individually restrained by the array of thick leather straps that hung off their edges.

Bunnie stepped up to the macabre chair coolly taking a seat upon it and laying back. She wasn't overly fond of being strapped down but understood the necessity of it. Servicing her robotic limbs would have to be done with their power left on since turning them off would require stopping her heart. With her limbs left on however, she could pose a serious danger if she were to experience a malfunction in mid examination.

Rotor had learned this lesson the hard way about a year and a half ago. He was performing a checkup on the hydraulics in Bunnie's left leg when she had a sudden uncontrollable spasm that resulted in a full powered knee to his chest. Apart from sending him flying into a nearby bulkhead, she dealt Rotor five broken ribs, a fractured collar bone, a concussion and a host of internal injuries. Not wanting a repeat of this incident, Bunnie relaxed whilst Rotor finished up strapping her in leaving only her non-robotic arm free to move since it neither needed to be restrained nor anchored.

Sonic and the others pulled up empty scrap boxes and work stools for seating so that the meeting could get underway. Sally leaned herself against a dividing rail as she reached down to grab Nicole off her boot before addressing her companions.

"Recent scouting missions have revealed that Robotnik has significantly scaled back city-wide defenses against infiltration. The data we've gathered in the past week has suggested strongly toward a scenario where the good doctor is either incapacitated in some way or is currently not within the city limits."

"I'd prefer plain 'ol gone." Sonic quickly added.

"As would we all, I'm sure." Responded Sally before continuing. "Whatever the case, it's been decided that this is an opportunity we cannot ignore and we are moving ahead with a plan to deal crippling blows to key targets in the core of Robotropolis."

Sally flipped Nicole open and reached for a small connector wire to plug her computer into a projection console. A black monitor suddenly came to life with scrolling green text quickly appearing in numerous lines before producing a two-dimensional overlay map of Robotropolis. She pointed out three spots on the screen which instantly became highlighted by blinking green boxes.

"We will focus our attention on the primary and secondary power distribution nodes as well as the master communications relay tower. These targets are all located deep within the inner-city, so it goes without saying that this mission will be extremely dangerous. The bulk of Robotniks standing army appears to be missing but we know that the Egg Tower and its surround are still guarded so we will be operating on a danger-close basis."

Tails watched intently as the brief progressed. Having only recently been deemed experienced enough to take part in "danger-close" assignments, he did not want to get anything wrong on his first official mission in central Robotropolis. Aside from damaging the trust of his friends, messing up this mission could very well cost him his life.

Uncle Chuck new all too well that Tails would be volunteering for this mission. The boy had for so long wanted to help his friends fight against oppression but until now was simply not old enough to do so. However, living on the receiving end of a Robotic onslaught forces one to grow up fast. By the time Tails was twelve he had come into contact with enough swatbots and other mechanical minions to begin service as an active member of the Freedom Fighters. The old veteran had grown up with this kind of conflict himself back in his day and felt a sort of sadness to see that what little of Tails' remaining youth or innocence was vanishing before his eyes.


	4. Chapter 4: Fall of Mobitropolis

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Chapter 4: Fall of Mobitropolis

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The year was 3235. The Kingdom of Acorn was fighting a desperate war to prevent global Mobian genocide against the Overlanders. Tall, bipedal primates with mostly bare skin and only tufts of fur upon their heads, the Overlanders were a rapidly multiplying species with an obsession for technological advancement and a hunger for land. For years prior, as far back as Charles could recall, there had been conflict between these apes and the free peoples of Mobius which had only recently erupted into open warfare.

A great thinker rather than a fighter, Charles led the Royal Science Ministry in its exploration into cybernetic adaptation. Having already perfected the process of harnessing naturally occurring power rings for energy, he was on the verge of completing a wondrous machine that could preserve the lives of the fatally wounded and ill until a means to cure or heal them could be devised. His crowning achievement, the roboticiser, would earn Charles the privilege of being knighted by King Maximilian Acorn himself.

As revolutionary as the device was, it wasn't doing much to halt the wiping out of people across Mobius. The war appeared to be forfeit due to the rapid advancement in Overlander instruments of death. Whole cities were being razed to the ground in mere hours at the peak of the wars devastation. All hope seemed lost for the Kingdom of Acorn.

In a twist of fate, one of the very Overlander scientists commissioned to develop weapons of mass destruction to exterminate the Mobians was charged with crimes against humanity. For the attempted testing of his demolecularising super-weapon upon his own species, Julian Kintobor of the house of Ivo was sentenced to death by the Overlander supreme justices. Before his sentence could be carried out however, the mad scientist crafted an escape and fled into the Mobian badlands.

Pursued by his Overlander persecutors, Julian managed to stay ahead just barely long enough to be found inches from death by a pair of traveling hedgehogs. In their kind nature neither Charles nor his brother Jules could leave the helpless man to die, even if he did represent the sworn enemy of the Mobian nations. They managed to haul Julian's obese form to safety and the Hedgehogs later learned of his escape from execution.

Sure that King Max would wish to hear whatever advice a defector would have to offer, Sir Charles enabled Julian to have an audience with the king. Up until then, the Mobians had no real formal interaction with Overlander culture. In the chronicles of the royal family, it was cited that a time had existed when both Overlander and Mobian shared the world in relative peace. Though neither waged war upon the other they were never engaged in cooperation either, opting rather to give each other room to exist as they saw fit.

The details of how the conflict between the two groups started were not clear. Scribes and scholars of the day theorized it had to do with land rights between the two in the old province of Mercia. A bedtime story told amongst the populace of Acorn told a tale of a chance encounter between a son of one of the Old Acorns, King Theodore, and an Overlander boy engaged in pistol target practice in the Great Forest. An accident ensued resulting in the boy fatally shooting the young prince and thus the age old feud began. Whatever King Max had previously heard or read about these Overlanders was being torn asunder by Julian's very forward cooperation.

The round scientist offered key insights as to how King Max's troops could best even the most well equipped Overlander war-party, that is of course with a little helping hand from his own expertise in robotics and weapons engineering. As battles began to turn in favor of the Mobians, Max had grown trusting enough of his new found ally to dub him Warlord of the Royal War Ministry. Using his newfound resources and privileges as Warlord, Julian began to amass a standing army of robotic soldiers. Thousands upon thousands of brand spanking new swatbots were rolling off the production lines. Julian claimed these were units practical through their versatility. He claimed that in times of peace they could be used as friendly law enforcement officers, thus removing living people from the dangerous job of upholding the laws of the kingdom.

This newfound freedom also granted the new Warlord access to top-secret information and schematics from other ministries including Sir Charles' roboticiser. It was upon finding this marvel of technology that the vile doctor's most heinous plans started to reach maturity. In the last legs of the war Julian led a metal army unlike anything the planet had seen before to crush the Overlander capital of Megapolis. To his surprise, a dismal fraction of the city's original population remained to be snuffed out. Regardless, after the fall of the city there was never again a run-in with so much as even a single Overlander to be reported. Warlord Julian returned to Castle Acorn in Mobotropolis victorious, the war had been won and peace would finally reign throughout Mobius once again… or so King Max believed.

Life appeared to be returning to normal around the glistening city and the new peace-keepers were doing a superb job maintaining the laws, but people were starting to disappear. Among the very first to vanish was Sir Charles' own brother Jules and his wife Bernadette. Their rambunctious six year old son had come to tell his "Uncle Chuck" of their absence after he had been alone for a whole day. Soon afterwards more were going missing, sometimes up to dozens a day. Charles noticed something else that worried him deeply as the swatbots that patrolled the streets seemed to be getting more and more zealous about keeping up the law. Jaywalking, littering and even being too loud past nine in the evening would result in immediate "corrective detainment". It didn't take the amount of genius that Charles possessed long to make the connection, so he and a small contingent of the royal guard went to question Warlord Julian about the disappearances.

After ascertaining that the Overlander scientist had been working at the Science Ministry for a number of days, he went there to find him. As head of the Royal Science Ministry, Sir Charles led his men into the most secure depths of the establishment, the roboticiser chamber. As they entered the large circular room the lights were all off, with the exception of the light green glow of the roboticiser's clear containment tube. Next to it stood Julian dimly lit by the faint green light, though something about him was different.

"Glad to see you made it to the party, Sir Charles." The bulbous man let loose a low, cruel chuckle before the sound of the large ceiling lamps flashed on in a procession around the room.

As light shot down in spotlights in a circle around the raised edges of the large room, figures began to appear. Silent, motionless figures standing strait and tall, reflecting the light that hit them were displayed lined up in neat rows around the perimeter of the chamber. It took a second for Charles to realize what Julian had done: the abducted people were being transformed into robots using the very machine that he himself had created. The horrified hedgehog took a few steps backward before bolting out of the door he came in through. The large steel door slammed shut behind him trapping the guards inside, but not the maniacal laughter from that madman.

Charles ran as fast as he could out into the open streets only to find that while he had been in the building his entire world had been plunged into chaos. Swatbots subduing civilians with laser fire, sentry pods darting overhead weaving through the towers of the city, and fires everywhere. Somehow amidst this confusion Charles was able grasp a moment of clear thought.

"Sonic… the kids!" he cried to himself before darting down a nearby alleyway. "I've got to get them out of the city."

He may not have served in the war as a fighter, but Charles had studied enough of the battles to recognize that at this point the city was already lost. The robots were all under Julian's control and they were placed at all infrastructural levels throughout the city and palace grounds. His only courses of action left were to evacuate those who he could from the city and try to survive long enough to allow his own escape.

To his great fortune, he had not been noticed by the robots by the time he made it out to the residential areas. He was exhausted but forced himself to run towards Rosie's nursery as fast as he could. As he hurdled over the iron fence a horrendous roar erupted from behind him. He spun around in time to see the palace going up in a huge fireball with the figure of a massive looming warship above it. It almost seemed like another city flying in the sky above the burning one. Within moments however it was cloaked in a thick black cloud of smoke.

Charles broke himself out of his stupor and continued to run at Rosie's door. He slammed against the wood trying frantically to make the door open. Just then he heard the familiar old voice of Rosie let out a shriek from inside the house. Charles ran quickly to a window cupping his hands around his mouth to yell inside.

"Rosie! Rosie do you have the kids?!" he yelled through the glass into the dark room with no response. "It's me, Charles! Please, Rosie, tell me you have the kids!"

Not even a second went by before the front door swung open and a blue flash came racing out to grasp Charles' legs. Sonic was shaking with anxiety, positively terrified.

"Uncle Chuck! What's going on?! I'm scared! Where are mom and dad?! Why's the castle all red like that?!" the poor boy cried up to his uncle asking question after question to which Charles had no real answer.

Charles fell to his knees and gave his nephew a comforting hug before pulling away to make direct eye contact with him, forcing himself to remain calm for the boy's sake.

"You're okay sonny, I'm here. Where's Rosie?"

Just as he asked, Rosie came barging out of the door yelling for Sonic to come back. She looked around and quickly recognized the face of her dear friend Charles. As she ran up to him another, much smaller figure crept out of the doorway behind her. Princess Sally Alicia Acorn held onto the door like it was a life-raft as she stared at the burning center of Mobotropolis. Her mouth slowly quivered open as tears flowed down her cheeks.

"D-daddy?" she meekly called to the blaze.

Rosie darted back to lead Sally along to the wall underneath a window in front of the house where Charles was talking to Sonic. The royal nanny was frantic, with her hands shaking and her eyes watering over.

She got Charles' attention "I thought you were one of those robots!" she proclaimed almost angrily. "I thought I had lost your nephew for sure… oh Charles, what on Mobius is happening?!"

"It's Julian; he's trying to capture us all." He left it at that despite the fact that he knew exactly what Julian was going to do to everyone he captured, "You need to get out of the city limits, somewhere safe and hidden."

Rosie thought for a few seconds before her face lit up. "Knothole! It's an old royal family vacation spot in the Great Forest known only by a select few servants to the Acorns. I do believe that nobody has used it in generations… it should be fairly safe there!"

Charles smiled weakly. "Then that's where we're going." He looked down to Sonic thinking about the other children of the city. He knew in his heart that he couldn't save nearly enough of them from capture, but Sonic… Sonic was fast and light on his feet. He knelt down to talk to his nephew again.

"Hey champ; you know how I made those shoes you're wearing for you, the ones that won't fall apart no matter how fast you run?"

Sonic sniffled a little bit before answering. "Yeah?

Charles almost choked on what he was about to say next. He could hardly believe what he was about to ask his six year old nephew to do. "Well, there's a bad man who made the castle all red. He wants to take all of your friends and… make them sit in time-out forever."

"Forever?!" exclaimed the shocked boy.

Charles nodded "You know it! You need to go get them because there is nobody else who can get to them as fast as you can."

Charles looked up toward the tree line of the Great Forest on the horizon and pointed his finger toward them. "See those grassy hills up towards the forest in the distance? When you get your friends, drop them off there. Rosie and I will meet you up there when you get as many as you can." He looked to Sonic again, placing his hands on his shoulders.

"If you see these big shiny guys with flashing red eyes, just run away. Do not go anywhere near them, do you understand me?"

Sonic nodded wearily as Chuck tried to keep himself from tearing up. Uncle and nephew went over the plan one more time for good measure before separating. Sonic trotted over to Sally gently helping her onto his back. Before running for the hills he called out to his uncle.

"See you out there somewhere!"

And with that he was gone, not to be seen by his uncle again for six years. Charles finally let himself cry a little as he watched his nephew's dust cloud dissipate. Rosie offered him her hands to comfort him. The mustached hedgehog quickly cleared his eyes to proceed with Rosie towards the hills. Rosie wasn't what one would call ancient but running didn't come easy to her anymore in her sixties. They slowly progressed through the neighborhoods, hiding in the shadows and scuttling in between houses through yards. As they hurried through the dark the hedgehog told the chipmunk everything that he knew had happened; the missing Mobians, the roboticiser, and Warlord Julian's attack on the city.

Carefully they navigated through the residential district towards the hills, narrowly avoiding being spotted by the many robotic sentries that patrolled the darkened streets. Soon enough they could see the swaying of the green, grassy hills in the breeze from where they were. Charles held Rosie's hand as she followed behind him low to the ground while hugging a fence in a front yard.

Charles stopped for a moment and looked back to his companion. "Not much further, just a couple more streets to cross."

Unfortunately his luck had just about run out. Carelessly he continued to look back towards Rosie as he stepped out from behind the end of the fence row and onto the sidewalk without looking first. His error was made unmistakably clear as beams of light landed upon him from down the street. Charles froze as if encased in stone and his stomach flew into knots and spirals in less than a second. Though he had stepped out of cover Rosie had not yet followed him out. She couldn't see what was making the light though she didn't need to; she knew everything she had to know through Charles' stiffened fingers. In a panic she gave him a jostle by shaking his arm screaming without a sound for him to snap back to his senses.

Charles' gaze went back to her, his eyes begging her to release his hand and hide. He loosed his hand deftly and signaled to her to find cover while the robotic minions began to beckon him.

"Halt. All Mobians are under arrest by order of Lord Robotnik. You will surrender all hope. Resistance will be met with deadly force." the synthetic monsters chanted in imperfect unison.

He watched Rosie scuttle back into the yard that they were about to leave to find cover in the branches and leafs of a large bush. Once she was hidden he focused his attention on the three blinding beams of light pointed at him from up the sidewalk. With a deep breath he clenched his fists and yelled back to the machines, leaning forward as he did so to make as much noise as he possibly could.

"You want me?! Do you?!" bellowed the hedgehog in a voice so loud and hoarse that it caused his eyes to water. "Then come get me you stupid slag heaps!"

Just then he turned face and ran down the sidewalk towards the corner. He could hear the pace of the approaching swatbots quicken as they moved to pursue him like horses of steel galloping on stone. Their wrist mounted cannons deployed with whirrs and clicks before opening fire, discharging red bolts of energy accompanied by sharp electrical noises. As Charles dove around the corner behind a concrete wall he could see the shots that barely missed him smacking against the pavement. Desperation kicked in causing him to become ungraceful in his stride, frantically pumping his arms and legs in the hardest sprint he could muster.

Even from around the corner he could hear his pursuers' footsteps and com chatter. Heaving his body forward he quickly swung his head to look behind him every few seconds to see when they'd round the corner and be clear to shoot him down. The next corner was rapidly approaching; he just had to make it, just had to run a little bit harder. He gasped for air as he threw a glance behind him once more. The red from the swatbots' visors were just momentary blurs as he snapped his focus forward again, reaching out to grab the corner and swing around it. Bolts of energy smacked the ground behind and ahead of him as he threw himself behind the cover of the corner again. This time though he had been expected, for when he looked up to continue his sprint a large metal fist made the most direct contact possible with his face.

Charles woke up slowly, fading in and out of consciousness a couple times before being able to see what was happening. He could see his feet being dragged along the floor on account of his hanging head, chin resting against his chest. He moaned in pain while he raised his throbbing head to look around. Two swatbots were dragging him by his arms down a very familiar plated corridor. He was back in the Science Ministry building and on his way to the central chamber. He could see many robots standing guard over hundreds of Mobians all standing in line while soft sobbing echoed throughout the long hall.

At last the swatbot escorts proceeded through the large steel door of the roboticiser chamber. At the heart of this chamber, the once celebrated machine was alive with activity. Bright electrical light spewed forth from its glass containment tube and the intermittent silhouette of a woman within it could be seen and heard in various stages of roboticization; screaming in agony while pounding and clawing against the wall of the tube. Eventually the activity came to a halt and the machine powered down, replacing the shrieks and wailing cries with a gentle hiss and a tube full of suspended vapor. The clear tube ascended into the top half of the machinery with a whine as the mist spilled out from the bottom. Before it could clear entirely two bright red lights shone through along with a soft electrical hum.

Charles watched in horror as a robotic female fox took slow deliberate steps out of the steam and off the machines' central platform. It marched into a line of similar robots all proceeding out the chamber's rear entrance, all blankly staring forward with red digitalized irises. He stared at their metal bodies and lifeless faces silently before being startled by a deep and woefully familiar voice.

"The workers of tomorrow are obedient, durable and best of all, expendable." The wicked scientist commented from behind an elevated control console near the roboticiser. "You should be proud Sir Charles. After all, you are essentially the architect of the illustrious era that is being ushered in tonight. A pity you sought such insignificant goals with such a magnificent machine."

Charles gritted his teeth, fighting against the minions that restrained him before yelling in rage. "Julian! You lying, traitorous, murdering—"

The obese Overlander cut him off. "Silence! That is no longer my name, rodent. You speak not with Julian Kintobor of the clan Ivo. No, you now speak with Doctor Robotnik, the greatest scientific genius Mobius has ever known! You however may simply address me as master."

Robotnik stepped out from behind the console and off the elevated platform to approach the captured hedgehog. Charles could see that he had swapped his royal warlord uniform for a form-fitting red jumpsuit adorned with a yellow cross upon the abdomen and matching yellow cape. It also seemed that he had already made some alterations to his body, including cybernetic eye and ear pieces and a fully roboticised left arm. His gaping mouth gleamed with large white teeth in a sinister smile that stretched nearly as wide as his stiff mustache.

Behind him floated a sort of spherical hovering camera which floated down in front of Charles' face. He grimaced as he saw his reflection in its lens, his face swollen and bruised from his face-first run in with a steel battering ram. Robotnik spoke aloud to the line of captured Mobians awaiting roboticization and to the hover-cam.

"This is the face of the one you have to thank for this momentous day! Sir Charles the Hedgehog not only was the one who found me and brought me to your precious King Max, enabling me to seize this kingdom from his gullible hands, he is also the creator of the machine that will transform every last flee-bitten one of you into mindless slaves that exist only to do my bidding."

Charles all but died as the doctor finished gloating. Essentially all of what was happening was indeed caused by Charles' actions the day he found the fat Overlander in the badlands. The guilt and shame was too much to bear and Charles collapsed in the grip of the two swatbots, dangling from their fists by his arms. There was no way out, no chance of rescue. It was over.

The hover-cam floated up to Robotnik's beaming face as he signaled the swatbots to place the shattered hedgehog upon the roboticiser's center platform. He came to a rest on his knees, too ashamed to even look up. The clear tube descended out of the ceiling mounted machinery until it made contact with the platform encapsulating Charles inside. Robotnik glared into the lens of the camera with a sudden expression of anger though making sure that Charles was visible in the roboticiser in the background by the camera.

The feed was being displayed on every screen still active within the city limits. News terminals overlooking groups of thousands of prisoners awaiting their fates boomed Robotnik's hope-crushing message for all to see and hear.

"Though he was the catalyst for your doom and my rise to power, he shall suffer the same fate as every one of you. Doctor Robotnik at the very least offers equal opportunity enslavement." The madman chuckled at his own cruel joke, before signaling the start sequence for the roboticiser.

Charles hardly flinched as the machine powered up around him, simply hanging his head in shame. While the light in the tube grew brighter a thought raced through Charles' mind. His nephew possessed an incredibly rare gift and with any luck it would allow him to survive the coming storm. The thought sparked enough hope in the hedgehog to see him through the coming years, deep within a shell of metal.


	5. Chapter 5: A Positive Role Model

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Chapter 5: A Positive Role Model

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"Uncle Chuck?" Tails asked with a small tone of confusion. Tapping his shoulder he tried to grab his attention again. "Hey, Uncle Chuck? You home?"

The Robian shook his head a little while his pixilated red irises "blinked" a couple times.

"Ah Tails! Thank you for that. I was having a bit of a day-mare."

The two tailed fox's expression continued being confused, even going as far as to tilt his head with an awkward smile. "You feel okay? The brief ended like five minutes ago. Everyone's left already, well except for Rotor, Bunnie and I that is. I noticed you just sitting over here while I was helping him working on Bunnies connectors." Tails laughed a little. "I think he might've been worried that he'd have to take a look at you too."

Charles looked over Tails shoulder to see Rotor hovering over Bunnies left leg. Still strapped to the reclined operating chair, she had her one free arm resting underneath her head while quietly chatting with her mechanic/physician. The walrus was wearing a pair of welding goggles while he soldered components underneath a removed section of plate armor.

Tails and Charles got up to see how things were going with the operation. Tails quickly trotted around to the opposite side of the chair as Rotor and hopped up on a stool at Bunnie's "safer" side.

"Oh thank the stahs Chuck wasn't on the fritz too!" she joked to Tails.

The boy shook his head while looking to Charles "Nope! Just dozed off was all."

Charles came up behind Rotor who was now reattaching the armor plate on the side of her metal thigh. "So how's she coming along?"

Rotor lifted his head as he finished attaching the plate. "I think I've done all I can here. Best I could give her with what I have was a quick fix. It could be days or it could be years before she starts having technical problems again, I really don't have a way of knowing much more."

"The problem he thinks is my connectuhs, where the nerves stop and the wires start." explained Bunnie. "Says my body is finally tryn' to reject my metal limbs. It's 'nuf to make a Rabbot rattle like a tin can."

"It sounds a lot worse than it really is." said Rotor reassuring his friend while undoing the straps that held her down. "Dr. Quack and I need to have a look at you together soon. I might be able to rig a swatbot to tap-dance and sing a stage number, but I'm not much of a neurosurgeon. If he can explain to me and hopefully treat exactly what it is that your nervous system is doing, then I'm sure I can come up with a means to compensate for the anomalies."

Bunnie didn't seem comforted by this, rather annoyed actually. She sat up and hung her legs off the side of the table. "Am I going to be ok for the mission tomorrow? That's all Ahm concerned with fer now."

Rotor crossed his arms while trying to come up with a concrete answer. His expression lightened before responding. "You'll be just fine I think. The margin for something going wrong is likely less than five percent." He nodded in agreement with himself.

Bunnie smiled once again. "That's all I wanted t'hear hun. I couldn't pass up a front row seat to wreckin' ol chrome-dome's play pen!" She looked over to Tails having reminded herself of his involvement in this coming mission. He was busy re-organizing the shop, putting tools away and wiping down work surfaces.

"So sugah, you ready for yuh first mission?" she inquired kindly while leaning over the chair she had been strapped to.

Tails looked back with a joyful grin. "You bet! I've been training in the Tornado and practicing on the swat-dummies for years just for this."

"I don't want to make you nervous by sayin' but handling yourself in the air over the forest is a lot different than handling yourself in the air with machines tryin' their best to shoot you down." Her eyes widened for emphasis after she finished.

Tails didn't seem phased by the thought at all. "They would need to have one heck of a machine to take the Tornado down. She's small, but tougher and faster than she looks." He finished packing a toolbox before closing it and turning around. "I'm ready for whatever Robotnik can throw at me."

Bunnie stood up satisfied with his response. A little part of her was uneasy with letting Tails come on this mission but she knew like the others that he had earned this through years of his mettle being tested. Her serious gaze was quickly replaced with her more familiar compassionate one. "I know you are hun. You're gonna knock em' dead up there, and then some!"

Both laughed a little, not finding anything overly funny rather simply enjoying each other's company. Tails found a certain fascination with Bunnie. It wasn't a form of attraction at all as much as it was literal fascination with how she worked. She was half kind hearted southern girl, half cold super-strong machine. He felt like he was learning amazing things just by spending time with her and in all honesty he was, just not in a way he'd expect.

Charles stepped up from behind Rotor who was already back to work on the memory reading program. "Hey Tails, how about you let me help Rotor clean up the lab? You should probably get a lot of rest before tomorrow."

Tails agreed and proceeded to leave the shop followed by Bunnie. As he walked across the village commons with her he looked up towards the evening sky. Knothole was covered almost entirely from aerial view by a thick forest canopy save for a few holes where the rest of their world flowed in. The moon was already out as it was casting light spots on the ground of the commons. The Tornado's hangar was on the edge of the village, camouflaged under the trees but facing out toward an open meadow that served as a landing strip. Living with the constant threat of being spotted from above by scout craft had eliminated any possibilities of creating a paved runway, much less with guiding lights, but the Tornado as Tails often said was a tough machine. It handled taking off and landing in the flat grassland just fine so far.

Tails shared a hut with Sonic, the life-long friend who was practically his older brother. Space in the village was limited and few people had a hut exclusively to themselves, with the exception of Princess Sally. Most recognized that Sally deserved at least some form of distinction as heir to the throne of Acorn, and having a wood and straw hut in the forest to call her own seemed the least that could be done to that end.

Tails arrived at his shared hut with Bunnie. Before he went inside, she knelt down a little to give him a hug. She found that Tails was one of the few people in the village who wasn't put off by physical contact with metal limbs. Though nobody would go to such lengths as jumping back in recoil or screeching in terror, she could plainly feel when people were privately uneasy with her. Tails honestly couldn't care less about it which she always found refreshing. As they let go of each other, Tails went inside to start getting ready for bed and Bunnie wandered off towards her own hut to do the same.

Simple fire light torches dotted the commons of Knothole Village. Their soft orange glow threw shadows on huts and the ground surrounding them. The lights in people's windows were slowly going off one by one as an orchestra of crickets chimed amongst the sound of branches in the breeze. A blue hedgehog emerged from around a corner making his way towards one of the village's many dwellings.

Sonic found himself at the door to Sally's hut. He didn't knock; he never had to. She seemed to know the sound he made on the dirt and the wood steps outside of her home, and this late in the evening there was rarely any other noise to catch her attention beyond the crickets. The door squeaked open before him revealing a worry ridden Sally. Her hair was slightly frazzled from a day's worth of head scratching while pouring over maps and building schematics. Faint lines were even forming under her deep blue eyes.

"I'd have to be a grade A slow-mo to not know you were going to need to talk to someone after today." the hedgehog calmly declared as a greeting.

Sally nodded her head to one side as if to say "yeah you're probably right" and stepped backward with the door, opening it wider and allowing Sonic to come in. As she closed the door behind him, Sonic leaned backward against a simple table halfway sitting on it.

"You look like you picked a fight with glass of warm milk and lost." Sonic joked.

"Gee thanks." She responded sarcastically. "Come over here and rub my neck while I talk at you." the princess teased back.

She sat at the head of her bed allowing room for Sonic to have a seat behind her. As he approached she pulled her computer off of her boot. "Good night Nicole."

The little gray machine replied in a synthetic female voice. "Good night Sally. Entering power-save mode."

Sonic took a seat as Sally placed Nicole on the window sill near the bed. After unzipping and removing her blue boots, Sally leaned back into Sonic who immediately began massaging the base of her neck and shoulders. She let loose a long exhale as if she had been holding her breath all day.

"I hope we're not making a mistake going into Robotropolis tomorrow." said Sally in a loud whisper. "I know better than to think everything will go smoothly; it never does. But still, this situation is different than any other we've seen before. It just seems too easy."

The blue hedgehog rested himself on the wall that the other side of the bed was up against, allowing Sally and him to recline a bit. He thought about what she said for a few seconds.

"If we don't do anything we could seriously end up regretting that too. I know I would." He ran his fingers up and down the back of her neck partially entering her hairline. "What gives me chills most about all this is Tails."

Sally made an agreeing noise. "He's young. But we weren't any older when we first started fighting back. Tails is very talented and I'm sure he'll do fantastic out there. Provided we don't all walk into some elaborate death trap…"

Sonic rolled his eyes. "You can be such a royal worrier sometimes, Sal."

"And you can be so reckless." she said while leaning her head back against his body looking up at the bottom of his face. Sonic smiled.

"Yeah that's why we're a great team. You spot trouble for me beforehand and then I go run into it."

Sally shook her head while rubbing her face. "At any rate, I guess it tires me to see Tails so excited to go risk his life in Robotropolis. I blame you for that kind of attitude in him you know."

The hedgehog felt like somebody had smacked him in the back of the head. Before he could protest she cut him off.

"You know exactly what I'm talking about too. Tails looks up to you Sonic. He wants to be just like you, wants to run out into battle with you, and you're only encouraging him."

Sonic scoffed. "Well sorry, I guess saving our planet a few times got me distracted from noticing that sort of thing."

"I'm not saying you shouldn't be fighting for Mobius." explained Sally clarifying her position. "In fact, I think we owe Knothole's survival to your actions. It's just that you shouldn't be parading what you do around Tails like it's something he should aspire to. Speaking with him lately has been almost like speaking with you, like he thinks he's invincible."

"Tails is twelve." Sonic argued, getting a little distracted from the neck rub he was previously giving her. "He's a kid and all kids have an immortality complex. We all did the exact same thing, but it didn't take us too many trips into Ro-butt-nik's playground to figure out just how fragile we are."

Sally sat forward pulling out of Sonic's unmoving hands. "I really don't think that Robotropolis is the best place for him to learn that lesson, Sonic."

Both stayed silent for a moment. Sonic knew deep down that she was right, that Tails looked up to him too much for Sonic to be so carefree and cavalier about his role as a Freedom Fighter. But he was for all intents and purposes Tails' big brother. Of course Tails would ask him about the missions he went on and it wouldn't do to just give him a debriefing. Sonic would stay up long hours of the night by Tails' bed telling him stories of the missions he went on, the giant robots he had tangled with, all the places he'd seen, people he'd met… everything. But in the end, Sonic was Tails' big brother. That meant he would somehow need to scrape together every last shred of responsibility he could to make sure Tails knew the risks, that it wasn't all fun and games.

"I'll talk with him tonight." said Sonic in a compromising tone of voice. He reached out to Sally's shoulders gently pulling her back into his body. He then wrapped his arms around her waist and clasped his hands together in front of her stomach.

She breathed a sigh of relief. "It would take a load off my mind. Thank you." She lightly scratched his forearm for a while before getting up to allow him to leave. "We've all got a big day ahead of us. Get some rest ok?" she asked as he walked out the door.

Sonic threw her a thumbs-up. "Will do, Sal. G'nite."

Tails still had a candle lit by his cot. As Sonic walked into his room, he stirred off his side sitting up. "Hey Sonic. Couldn't sleep."

Sonic chuckled a little bit. "Yeah I can see that. You excited about tomorrow?"

Smiling, Tails nodded. "I'm finally gonna do it. Robotnik won't know what hit him!"

The blue hedgehog took a seat on a stump Tails used as a chair next to his bed. His eyes looked towards the ground for a moment before he heard his little friend call his name curiously.

"You know that I'm mondo happy that you're finally able to go on missions with us. It's totally awesome that you're psyched to help fight, but I need to make sure that you really understand what it is you're getting into."

Tails tilted his head slightly but remained silent. Sonic continued.

"So far this year, we've lost three people. Theo, Jean and Harris were all caught by swatbot patrols." Sonic paused thinking about those poor souls. "You remember Harris right?"

Tails nodded, still silent.

"He was a big bear; I mean a really big bear! He could snap a swatbots neck with his bare hands, yet even he went down."

Tails finally interrupted. "Why are you telling me this? You're not saying I shouldn't go are you…"

"What? No. No way. No way would I say you shouldn't go. The team is going to kick so much more butt from having you with us in the thick of it that there's not a chance I'd tell you that you shouldn't come. I just want to make sure that you don't…"

Sonic hesitated, unsure how to phrase what he should say next. Tails looked on curiously before trying to finish Sonic's sentence himself. "That I don't think I can't get killed?"

A breath of laughter escaped through Sonic's nose. "Yeah actually, that's pretty much exactly it. You sure you're not psychic lil' buddy? Cuz' that'd be awesome!"

Tails ignored his attempts at comic tension relief. "Sonic, I'm not stupid. I wouldn't do anything to jeopardize myself or the mission." Sonic frowned listening to his dear friend.

"I know you aren't stupid Tails. I'm sure actually that you're smarter than me! I'm just nervous for you is all. We all are. It's almost like we're all going on our first missions all over again only this time we're going with you."

The yellow fox lay back in his bed, his disappointed frown slowly being replaced by his usual relaxed smile. "I'll show them they don't need to worry about me then. I'll make you all proud of me."

Sonic smiled in relief to see that Tails wasn't angry with him for long. "We are all proud of you already, especially me." He rubbed Tails' head a bit, messing up his bangs like he always did. "Think you can sleep now, or should I get you something like tea?"

Tails thought for a moment with a long "hmm". "How about one of your stories?" the boy requested.

Sonic knew he really shouldn't but figured there would be no harm in it. After all, Tails would start having stories of his own by the next day. Sonic put his gloved hand to his chin while he tried to recall a specific tale.

"Alright lil' bro. How does the E.V.E. event sound?"

Tails flinched a little. "Uh, not that one. E.V.E. was really creepy." He slightly tugged his sheets closer to his chin as Sonic mentioned the rouge AI.

The storyteller nodded in agreement. "Yeah you're right, she was. Okay, how about the race through Stardust Speedway?" Sonic suggested.

"Oh yeah! I love this one!" the fox happily cheered.

Sonic stayed by Tails' side that evening, telling a story that the boy had heard before but loved nonetheless. It didn't take long for him to fall asleep but Sonic always finished his stories regardless. By the time the story ended Tails was in a deep, sound sleep. Sonic remarked to himself how peaceful the fox always looked when he slept, as opposed to how he'd often wake up to find himself in a pool of his own drool or half hanging out of his bed. Tired, he quietly blew out the candle on Tails' nightstand and got up to go to sleep. Before leaving the doorway, he turned around.

"Sleep tight little buddy."


	6. Chapter 6: The Assault

* * *

Chapter 6: The Assault

* * *

There were few places on Mobius where daybreak didn't arrive like a tide of beauty cresting over the lines of the horizon. Robotropolis however, was one of those few places. The golden-orange beams that pierced the veil of night merely spread and diluted through the smog-ridden atmosphere of Robotnik's city, resulting in a tint of brown that hung like a thin cloud overhead. This place would normally have been buzzing with the noise of factories and hovercraft, but the past week had been anything but normal. The area was eerily silent aside from the raspy sound of dust and grime blowing in the wind along metal surfaces.

Breaking the silence, a blue streak stormed down one of the main access roads towards central Robotropolis. Sonic was crossing through a region that was now referred to as the remnant. After Robotnik captured and claimed Mobotropolis as his prize, the center of the city was somehow instantly demolished and replaced with the dark towers and mega-factories that still stood today. The district outside of city-central had been attacked as well but for the most part, the old residential zones were simply allowed to decay and cake with the pollutants that filled the air. Huge power line bundles lay twisting through smashed houses and down what used to be neighborhood streets, with offshoots diving into the ground resembling veins. There were a few scantly constructed warehouses out in the remnant, though most seemed to have been forgotten by their builder. Scraps of metal, detritus and toxic waste lay spattered throughout this region to the point of forming small hills in certain locations.

The remnant had traditionally served as a staging area for the Freedom Fighters before entering the center of Robotropolis, due to its relative low amount of swatbot or surveillance activity. Sonic screeched to a halt at an intersection, setting Sally back on her feet from his arms. For a moment they seemed to do nothing except for scan the skies above for hover-cams. Soon another form approached from the edge of the city. Through the hazy air a small blob appeared drawing closer and closer. As its size grew so too did the rigid hum of its engine. Finally the Tornado flew a couple hundred feet directly over the waiting couple dropping Bunnie and Antoine as it did so.

Antoine could be heard screaming as he briefly plummeted before being caught by Bunnie who then slowly lowered them down the remaining distance using the thrusters in her robotic feet. Upon reaching the ground Antoine dizzily celebrated.

"Oh soleed ground, how I love you so…" he cooed as he got on his hands and knees and began kissing the pavement.

The others made slightly disgusted noises before Bunnie openly commented. "Geez An'twan, y'all have any idea how dirty that's gotta be?"

His eyes widened before yanking himself to his feet. He spat a couple times and frantically rubbed his lips with his sleeve. In an instant he stopped, as if attempting vainly to save face. "Oui, zat eez a valid point, cherie."

"Done clowning around over their Antoine?" asked Sally slightly annoyed as she unfolded Nicole. Hearing no objections, she continued by speaking into Nicole's on board microphone. "Everybody's communicator working?"

Sonic pulled back the cuff of his glove to reveal a small device that resembled a watch before speaking into it. "Mine's good."

Bunnie simply spoke to a small black spot on her mechanical arm. "Nevuh leave home without mine."

Antoine rolled up his sleeve uncovering a device similar to Sonic's. "Mine eez fully operennial."

Lastly, Tails' voice chimed in over Nicole's speakers as well as all the other communicators; the hum of his airplane audible in the background. "I think you mean op-era-tion-al An'twan. Over."

Antoine was openly offended. "Why eez it zat Tails eez thinking he must always be correcting my speech? O-per-enn-ial. You see? I am speaking zee perfectly fine!" After finishing he again attempted to quickly compose himself, which only sent the awkward levels further through the roof.

Sonic shook his head in dismay. "You're a real piece of work Ant."

The coyote snapped his attention to the blue hedgehog. His expression unexpectedly became quite friendly. "Merci monsieur Sonic!" he beamed with false flattery.

Sally held her hands on her hips, growing fairly impatient by now. "Seriously, knock it off you two! We're in enemy territory now; we need to stay frosty." She looked towards the center of the robotic city and then up to the sky to see Tails still making his pre-entry circles over the remnant.

"This is it team. Tails will enter central airspace and use the Tornado's weapons to create a breach in the master communication relay tower. Bunnie will enter through this breach and place Rotor's detonation packs at the tower's three main frames of support about halfway up. The explosions should cause a "snapping toothpick" effect sending the top half of the spire to the ground. Even if we can't see it from where we are we should all be able to hear when this happens, but a signal will be sent via com device regardless. All swatbots or other independent sentries that remain in the city should be unable to communicate with each other at this point."

Tails called in over the communicator. "With communications down I doubt we'll get too many bogeys up here, but if it does gets too hot where do you want me to go? Over."

"If you get too many hostiles coming after you, do your best to lose them over the forest. We'll call you when we're ready for evac but if you can't make it, make sure to tell us." She used a considerably less commanding tone of voice when speaking to Tails without even realizing it.

An unexpected collection of seconds went by before Tails radioed back. "Understood. Over and out."

She paused to bring up schematics of the power stations on Nicole's view screen. "After the signal is sent, Sonic will proceed alone to the primary power distribution nodes. He will make use of his speed to navigate down the cooling shafts to the temperature regulating station rather than the nodes themselves. He will place a charge to destroy the temperature regulators and evacuate before the ventilation tubes turn into furnaces."

Sally moved her hair behind her ears and threw a glance at Sonic. "Once you've knocked out the temperature regulators, the main power nodes will overheat after approximately seven minutes. The explosion from those generators going critical is going to be massive, so you better make sure you are well clear of the tubes and the surface entrance facility."

Sonic laughed a bit. "You do know who you're talking to right? I'll be in and out with enough time left over to enjoy a mid-mission chili dog." boasted Sonic while patting the satchel on his back.

Sally rolled her eyes at Sonic while she carried on. "By the time main power is knocked offline, Antoine and I will be waiting by the entrance to the secondary power generator. Without power being supplied we should be able to bypass the external defenses with ease, though we will only have sixty seconds to get inside before the secondary generator kicks in. The controls to this generator will be easier to access than the one Sonic is after. I'll use Nicole to set the generator to overload itself after five minutes, thus removing power from all major systems in Robotropolis."

She took a hard look to the center of the city at the Egg Tower. Thinking for a moment she then turned to her blue companion. "When the power is gone we may have a secondary objective. If it's possible, I'd like for us to gain access to the Egg Tower."

Had Sonic been drinking something it would have probably been flying out his nose once he heard Sally's suggestion. Bunnie and Antoine seemed similarly shocked as well, as Bunnie opted to voice her concern.

"Sally-girl, you sure that's a good idea? I mean, Nicole's got next t'nuthin as far as info on that place goes."

"We need to get a fix on what exactly happened with Robotnik." Sally insisted.

"The best place to find clues about that would be where he lives. Not to mention seeing what he's been working on in his secure labs or stealing whatever data we can from his archives would work to our advantage."

She held Nicole up and wiggled it in her hand a little. "Nicole would have the schematics for his tower too if we did that. When the power goes out it may be our best shot at actually getting in there."

Sonic was thrilled upon hearing the plan. He was sometimes of the opinion that Sally was over-cautious; unwilling to step an inch into anything without Nicole being able to display it for her level for level, inside out and standing on its head. To him it would always come as a pleasant surprise to hear Sally advocate such a risky move.

"We'll get to it if we get to it." The ground squirrel said calmly. "Let's just get this mission underway now."

The others nodded in agreement and began running toward central Robotropolis. Bunnie lifted her mechanical arm to her face as she called to Tails.

"I'm comin' up, Tails. Get ready to meet me y'hear?"

The pilot of the Tornado responded quickly. "Loud and clear Bunnie! Over."

Bunnie made a small hop into the air before her thrusters blasted on. Once airborne, she proceeded to soar upwards towards the Tornado which had been circling overhead as Tails waited for the attack to commence. Tails brought his flying speed down as low as he could as she carefully matched speeds along side it. With a steady hand she reached for the suspension wires in between the upper and lower wing set and pulled herself in them.

Tails called to her over the sound of the wind roaring by. "Hang on tight, we're gonna tear the sky open!"

Bunnie knelt on the lower wing clasping the suspension wires as Tails threw the Tornado into full throttle. Its engine became considerably louder and Bunnie had difficulty hanging on in spite of the wind and acceleration, even with her robotic arm. The polluted city swept by beneath them as they approached the communications tower.

Scanning the surroundings, Tails noticed three objects reflecting the light rapidly closing the distance between them from below. Tails barely had time to warn Bunnie before yanking the control stick of the red biplane to the side sending it into a tight barrel roll. Three swat-pod hovercrafts flying in formation screamed through the space the Tornado once occupied before making a b-line to give pursuit. Bunnie had lost her footing but was still holding on by her one mechanical arm to the suspension wires.

"Hang on!" yelled Tails. "We'll be in range in just a few more seconds!"

The pods began to open fire from behind, hurling red bolts of energy past the fuselage and through the set of wings. Bunnie let loose a small yelp upon feeling the heat from a shot as it flashed by her head singing her hair. Afraid that trying to make his biplane dance from side to side would cause Bunnie to be flung off prematurely, Tails opted to go into a shallow dive to evade his pursuers. As the plane tilted down and increased speed, the cybernetic rabbit struggled to get her footing back as she pulled herself forward with her mechanical arm back on top of the bottom wing. They were now closing in on the tower at an alarming rate, but the bullet shaped swat-pods were relentless in their attempts to shoot them down. Occasional bolts of energy were starting to smack against the thin armor of the Tornado leaving small smoking holes. Tails clutched the control stick tight, gritting his teeth as he pointed the front of his plane directly at the tower's midpoint.

Tails leaned his head over the rim of his cockpit towards Bunnie. "When I fire, you jump!" he called over the roar of the engine and the howling of the wind. Bunnie nodded with a quick downward jerk of her head while Tails began flipping switches on the dash of the cockpit. Underneath the tornado at the base of its bottom wing, a hatch opened up loosing a metal rack with a set of three silver tubes topped with red domes.

Tails yelled at the top of his lungs as he pulled the trigger on the other side of the control stick. "Deploying explosives now!"

With a fizzle followed by a loud scream, each of the silver tubes went screeching towards the communications tower at high speed. Their paths were outlined by a faint vapor trail, showing their irregular flight paths behind them. Though they swirled independently through the sky, they all convened on a specific location on the metal hull of the tower creating a localized yet violent explosion.

Bunnie had let go of the Tornado's suspension wires as soon as she saw the white vapor trails. Freefalling for a few seconds while watching the explosion, she torpedoed towards the smoking wound in the side of the tower. Drawing closer, Bunnie preformed a forward summersault to throw her metal legs ahead of her. Once in a breaking stance she turned on her thrusters at full blast to slow her forward motion and to ease her decent. The instant she had slowed down to a full mid-air stop she was already at her target and powered down, causing her to fall a few inches onto a metal overhang just beneath the smoking hole in the tower's wall. From here Bunnie watched Tails pull away with the swat-pods still dedicated to the chase. She wiped her forehead and fixed her windswept ears and hair before lifting her built in communicator to her mouth.

"This is Bunnie. Had to slam on the breaks pretty hard but I've made it to the towuh." She gave a mischievous glance to the satchel of detonator packs as she slid it off her back and down her organic arm. "Y'all are gonna hear from me real soon."

While Bunnie slipped through the smoldering hole Tails continued his aerial acrobatics with the three swat-pods. No longer burdened with Bunnie's safety, he was free to push the Tornado to its maneuvering limits. He bobbed and weaved the red biplane though the towering structures of the inner city in an almost teasing manner with the swat-pods. His pursuers would lob energy bolts his way only to have them miss and spark on the surfaces of the metal buildings around them.

Tails gripped the control stick tightly as he yanked back, causing the Tornado to do a wide back-flip. While upside down, Tails looked upward to see the pods screech by underneath unaware of his position. As Tails leveled his craft he had become the pursuer as the pods were sitting ducks ahead of him. With the flick of a switch, dark gray gun barrels unveiled themselves from the forward facing edge of the Tornado's lower wing close to the fuselage. Once he had lined up his sights, Tails squeezed the red trigger on the other side of the control stick. The barrels went alive with fire and lead as they opened up on the tight formation of bullet-shaped pods ahead of them. Bright tracers sprayed all over their target as small shreds of plating and smoke flew off behind. The first pod took too many direct hits and exploded immediately, knocking its wingmen off course in either direction. The left pod had been knocked strait into an oncoming tower-face, utterly destroying itself in a violent burst of fire and metal scrap. Quite pleased with himself, Tails throttled up to pursue the remaining swat-pod which was now fleeing towards the center of Robotropolis.

Sonic sprinted along a wide highway that led deep into central Robotropolis. As he ran, the noise of gunfire and explosions caught his attention. The second he looked to the sky, a swat-pod screamed no more than thirty feet over his head. It left a trailing black cloud of smoke headed by orange flame before it pulverized itself on the ground next to the highway. The ensuing explosion produced a small fireball which plumed upward. Watching in amazement, Sonic saw his adopted little brother's plane roar through the ascending fire before sweeping back up into the sky. A smile about a mile wide hit the hedgehogs face as he moved for his communicator.

"Nice shooting Tails!" exclaimed Sonic while throwing a celebratory fist in the air accompanied by a small hop in his stride.

Tails laughed a bit over the open frequency. "I got them with the oldest moves in the book." he joked.

Radio silence resumed as Sonic stormed forward with newfound enthusiasm. Approaching the limits of the inner-city, the hazily illuminated smog proved grossly insufficient to provide daytime light in the shadow of the looming buildings. The air while thick was cold, and the slow steady churn that Sonic had associated with the city was becoming more and more audible. The blank highway normally would be full of supply transports bringing plundered ore from regions across Mobius to Robotropolis' production facilities, as well as being evenly patrolled by swatbots. But activity in the city had appeared to be almost nonexistent as of late; not a single alarm blaring while Sonic made his way up the path to Robotropolis' "front door".

Branching off the main road, Sonic skidded to turn down an alleyway littered with garbage and dotted with pools of filthy standing water. The sound of his rushing feet echoed greatly in these smaller spaces, as did the sound of the metal cans and scrap that were tossed everywhere behind him in his wake. All at once, the hedgehog slowed to a quiet walk before stopping at the corner of a building. Peering around it, he scoped out the main entrance to the primary power distribution node complex.

Sonic was almost delighted to see a number of swatbots still guarded this building. A smirk moved up his muzzle as he was about to take a step out from behind the cover of the building, but suddenly he stopped himself. His gaze hardened on two of the robots standing guard next to the steel blast doors before murmuring quietly to himself.

"Centurions…"

Standing roughly eight feet tall, putting their heads about two feet higher than their lesser companions', two swatbot centurions loomed on either side of the entry way to the complex. Their armor was easily distinguishable from the rust-spotted charcoal gray of the standard patrols that surrounded them. Their silver diamond plate accents shone brightly even in the dim light of the inner city, and the near perfect black of their ebony steel armor plating produced an eye-popping contrast. As if their size weren't imposing enough, centurions were known for their utilization of a diverse selection of over-sized weaponry. These two were armed with Robotnik's top of the line infantry gatling-lasers, huge guns with a set of six three foot long, rotating laser banks designed to deliver searing hot death to a multitude of targets at once. Atop these robots was the trademark head which resembled that of their smaller cousins; a bowl with a red view visor across the midpoint. A bright light could be seen in their visors bouncing from one side to the other as they methodically scanned their surroundings for anything that needed to be incinerated.

Even from fifty feet away, Sonic could hear the scrambling whines and beeps of their coded com chatter, which seemed to be transmitting furiously. "They must have shown up here as soon as Tails started blowing things away…" he silently deduced. The blue hedgehog took a couple of deep controlled breaths knowing that even with his incredible speed, centurions were very dangerous and difficult to damage. Before he could make his move three loud booms sounded out, bouncing in between the surfaces of the surrounding buildings. Looking up and over the complex, Sonic could see the tall spear-like form of the communications tower splintering at its middle with flame spewing from each rupture. The top half slowly began to topple to one side cutting through the air like a giant blade. A horrendously loud groan belched forth throughout the city as the remaining connected sections of the tower bowed and twisted before finally snapping free. As the top half of the tower entered free fall, Robotropolis seemed to descend into silence leaving only the quickly fading echo of the moaning metal. The brief seconds of quiet were ultimately smashed into a million thundering shards as the relay tower crashed into the structures and surface below. A deafening boom seemed to rumble the very foundations of Robotropolis as multiple explosions erupted from the area of the impact.

In awe, Sonic stared up at the spectacle. They had blown up buildings before but never before had the destruction he and his friends inflicted upon Robotnik's city seemed so dramatic to him. His wrist communicator crackled to life, startling him slightly.

"Mon Dieu! Bravo, my cherie!" Antoine praised, having been thoroughly impressed.

Bunnie answered back modestly. "Aw, thank you An'twan but to be honest, gravity did the hard part."

Sally's voice tuned in next. "Alright Sonic, that's your cue. Tell us when you're done with the temperature regulator.

"No problemo, Sal. I'll talk with you again in a flash." Sonic subtly boasted.

He peered around the corner again to see the grim machines speaking amongst themselves frantically. Sonic took this as his perfect opportunity to strike as the robots seemed to be taken aback by the loss of communication from across the city. Like an azure bolt of lightning he rounded the corner and blitzed the swatbot guard detail. Rolling into a spin-dash, he hacked strait into the chest and out the back of one of the metal guards before latching on to the rim underneath the face of one of the centurions. His forward momentum caused him to spin the hulking machine's dome while he circled over its shoulders like a blue halo. A second passed before the head would spin no further and stopped with a ringing "ting". Sonic came to a stop standing on the robot's shoulder from which he delivered an effortless kick to the machine's face, easily detaching its unfastened head.

As Sonic rode the remains of the disabled robot to the ground with a crash, every other swatbot including the second centurion raised their weapons at the small assailant. He was about to deliver one of his playful wisecracks before he observed that the metal minions were behaving far more proactive than he was used to. There were no commands to halt, no "priority one" alarm calls, only the sharp zaps from the swatbots' wrist mounted weapons and the horrible rising whirr from the spinning chambers on the centurion's gatling laser.

The blue hedgehog let loose a startled cry as he jumped backward, narrowly avoiding the hail of laser fire that bombarded the space he once occupied. The shots found their way instead to the remains of the centurion that had fallen, which then quickly exploded under the armor piercing attack. Fire and metal shrapnel flew in all directions while Sonic continued to perform dodging maneuvers. As soon as he wasn't either in the air or on his hands, Sonic bolted around the perimeter of the swatbot formation dashing in circles at each individual machine's feet. As he did so the centurion's gatling laser opened up, spraying its hapless allies with countless laser bolts. Sonic was just beginning to feel at ease when the centurion appeared to realize the error of its strategy.

The giant robot's gun stopped firing but its barrels kept spinning, ready to open up again on a second's notice. As the hedgehog continued to run circles around the machines, not quite noticing that they weren't exploding anymore, the centurion deftly produced a small metal cylinder from its waistline. After toggling a small switch on it, the robot tossed the can into the center of its formation where it began to spew a thick white cloud. Sonic quickly found he was unable to see and his breathing was becoming difficult.

Sonic slowed down as he loosed a few hard coughs. "Tear gas. This isn't good." he thought to himself. Though he couldn't see, he could not hold still either. The swatbots all had infrared vision allowing them to track Sonic via his heat signature, even in the blinding gas. If Sonic stopped he'd find himself riddled with laser fire. Sonic didn't want to leave the ground to leap at his attackers without being able to see where he'd land, so he opted for one of his oldest tricks for quickly bringing down pesky bots.

After kicking the gas canister away, he rolled into a buzz saw along the ground. Sonic knocked out a leg of one of the swatbots causing it to lose balance and fall to the ground. Once the machine was on its face, the hedgehog rounded back and sawed through its neck, severing the head. He repeated this until the remaining guards were defeated leaving only the hulking centurion to deal with. In the canister's absence the gas was starting to disperse, though Sonic's eyes were already thoroughly watered from the irritating agent. Sonic was fairly annoyed with the mechanical menace at this point and did not hesitate to launch a spin attack at its main gun, damaging it beyond use.

Recognizing the uselessness of its weapon the centurion dropped it like dead weight, allowing it to crash clumsily on the ground. This machine was not through yet however. Sonic was confident in taking the first one down because he took it by surprise, but this one would simply swat Sonic off like a fly if he tried a similar attack. As the hedgehog considered his options the giant robot raised its right arm, pointing its wrist mounted weapon at him. Sonic had been pointed at by swatbots like this before but something about the long narrow tube bothered him, especially the flickering pilot light in front of it.

At about the second he realized what the pilot light was for, flame sprayed forward as if it were water from a hose. Sonic rolled to the side and bolted, feeling the intense heat radiating behind him as he ran. The napalm stuck to the metal surfaces it landed on and continued to burn, quickly eating up terrain that Sonic could safely use to approach the hellish centurion. Sonic had had quite enough of being bossed around by a glorified swatbot by now.

"You're really starting to tick me off, big guy!" Sonic called angrily before pushing himself into a sudden burst of extra speed. Unable to keep up, the robot stood with its side exposed to Sonic. From this angle the hedgehog streaked into the air towards its outstretched arm, quills blazing. With its arm stretched out the vulnerable joint components in between the thick plates of armor were exposed, allowing Sonic to effectively sever its arm at the elbow. Without the appropriate nozzle, napalm compound oozed rather than sprayed from its open wound as well as circulatory lubricant. It only took a few seconds for the sparking wires in its arm to ignite this mixture and cause a chain reaction of backwards ignition, detonating the robot from inside. Liquid flame streaked through the air in all directions as Sonic finally reestablished contact with the ground in a graceful cat-like landing.

As Sonic rose to his feet he slowly unclenched his fists. The front court to the facility was littered with scorched metal scraps and pools of churning smoke and flame. Sonic's strait face was quickly replaced with his familiar smirk as he observed his handiwork. With a deep breath he sped towards the entry corridor, leaping over the burning pools and racing into the dark innards of the complex.


	7. Chapter 7: Trapped

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Chapter 7: Trapped

* * *

Sally Acorn crept silently across a low rooftop in central Robotropolis, deep controlled breaths causing her shoulders to visibly rise and fall. Far from featureless, the roof of the secondary generator complex had many small structures for her to hastily duck behind when hover cams passed by. She paused for a moment next to a large transformer box before throwing a glance behind her.

"Try to keep up Antoine." She quietly suggested to her timid companion.

The anxious coyote whispered back, voice trembling as he did so. "Oui, my princess. One moment…"

He tiptoed out from behind a fan box in a cautious waltz of placing one foot forward and bringing the other one to its side rather than ahead of it. His left hand firmly held the sheathed saber at his side, trying in earnest to not allow it to rattle as his body quivered, while he held his right arm slightly outstretched from his body as if he were walking a tightrope. He uttered a relieved whimper as he caught back up with Sally who was now kneeling near the edge of the roof's flat surface.

The rest of the complex's cover was steeply slanted downward towards the ground below and would not be able to be traversed without a repelling line. Sally produced a coil of woven rope from her back satchel and handed it to Antoine. Without speaking she pointed to a pipe like feature close behind them and moved her hands to simulate tying a knot. Antoine quickly followed her orders, seemingly much more sure of her meaning than if she had verbally told him to secure the line. While he twisted the rope through loops and ties, Sally pulled Nicole off of her boot. By pulling on what appeared to be a featureless black plug on the bottom of her hand held computer, she produced a length of fiber-optic cable. Sally tossed the coil down the steep slant of the building allowing it to unwrap and extend the ten feet before reaching the drop-off to the surface below. Once the end of the cord dangled over this ledge, Sally opened up Nicole's view screen. The image showed a direct view above two swatbot sentries standing guard near the entrance to the facility; no more, no less.

Satisfied, Sally pushed a button on Nicole's keypad causing it to reel in the extended wire within itself. As Antoine finished securing their line, she brought up Nicole's communicator function which she utilized with the softest whispers she could.

"Bunnie, how soon can you make it to the secondary generator?" She adjusted Nicole's output to the lowest audible volume before Bunnie could respond.

"I burned big'ol chunk of energy getting in 'n out of that tower before it bought the farm, so I'm makin' my way to y'all on foot." panted Bunnie, the sound of her metal feet clanking in a quick trot in the background noise. "I'll be there in… eight minutes."

Nodding to herself, Sally answered back. "Sonic should have the first node complex shut down by then. When the power is off, we'll need you to help us pry these doors open."

She thought to herself briefly before continuing. "You've got that all under control over there don't you Sonic?"

Inside the main node complex's ground floor, a lone blue hedgehog took a couple careful steps towards one of the several gaping circular holes in the floor. Peering down the huge ventilation shaft, Sonic raised his wrist communicator to his face. "I had a formal welcoming committee waiting for me outside the entrance. We partied for a bit but I really had to juice." Done joking, Sonic stated his intent. "I'm about to enter the ventilation tunnels now, so get ready to set your timers for the power grid failure."

"Will do. Send us a signal when the temperature regulators are offline and we'll be set." answered Sally over the communicator. The crisp sound of her voice over the radio signal seemed to find every corner of the building and echo for several seconds. With a quick beep the communicator was again silent and Sonic could continue with his mission.

The building that he was in served as a sort of over sized vent cover, with the majority of the complex deep beneath ground level. Within the long trapezoid shaped cover were a host of elevated catwalks that spanned the length of the building. Up here, minor monitoring stations were manned by small robotic spider-like drones. The miniature machines seemed oblivious to the hedgehog's presence in their facility, merely continuing to shift and insert their needle shaped legs from hole to hole on their consoles. The only sources of light were from the accent fluorescents adhered to the corners and beams of the structure and the giant circular grates running down the building's ceiling. Since the facility's purpose was to vent heat from the power distribution nodes, these large steel meshes were a necessity to allow heat to blow up and out of the complex.

Taking a look deep down a ventilation shaft, Sonic could make out several partitions in the tube occupied by giant spinning fans. A low roar ascended from the metal tube from the sheer volume of air being forced through.

"The big egg couldn't make this too easy now could he?" he spryly jeered to himself.

Without another moment's hesitation, Sonic took off in circles around the entrance to the tube moving faster and faster. Suddenly he threw himself in against the blowing wind, using his momentum to run along the walls of the tube in a downward spiral. It didn't take long for Sonic to reach the first fan. The hedgehog carefully controlled his stride, taking care not to be blown off course by the rushing air as he sided up to the spinning blades. He sped himself up just fast enough match speeds with the enormous spinning paddles to the point where it seemed as if the fan was stationary and the tube was the one that was spinning. With a quick side step through the air, Sonic hurdled through the gap between the spinning blades without a single scratch and as easily as jumping through an open door.

With a satisfied huff, he hurried down the giant shaft to the next fan to repeat the process. He would do this four times before arriving at an access hatch embedded into the wall of the tube. With a well timed hop, he catapulted from one side of the shaft into this opening coming to a rolling stop inside of the small maintenance hall. As Sonic uncurled from a spiny ball, he sprawled out on his back with closed eyes. Slowly getting up, he shook his head woozily.

"Ugh… too many loops." Sonic quietly lamented to himself. With a hand on the wall for support, he wobbled over to the hatch he jumped through to look further down the ventilation shaft. With no more fans blocking the view, an immensely descending expanse of metal coils stretched into a dark abyss. Electrical currents arched freely over these nodes briefly illuminating the near terrifyingly gargantuan chasm that the distribution nodes were housed within. Sonic took a sharp step backwards, feeling the sort of sudden chill in his stomach one feels as they take an unexpected fall.

He made a mental note of how carefully he would have to execute his exit of this shaft as he turned face and streaked down the maintenance corridor. Within seconds, Sonic found himself at the end of the corridor with the temperature regulator control station. More of the spider-bots were busily pouring over switches and signal lights while probing interface terminals with their slender needle like legs. Sonic and the machines ignored one another while both went about their business; the machines with their endless probing, and the hedgehog producing several crudely fashioned explosive devices from his back pack. He dedicatedly stuck them to anything he figured looked important including an interface terminal, a large metal box with several flashing red lights and the wire bundles leading to and from the whole station.

Detonator in hand, the blue hedgehog streaked back down the corridor towards the maintenance hatch. Pushing down on the red button atop the small silver cylinder with his thumb, Sonic leapt through the opening and back into the ventilation shaft. Dust and debris were ejected from the hatch behind him as he made contact with the opposing wall of the tube and began pumping his legs as hard as he could. He could hear the power that seemed to hum in the very walls fall away into nothingness, leaving behind the echo of his feet against the metal siding of the cylindrical duct. The fluorescent lighting in the tubes flickered momentarily before switching over to emit red light and a synthetic male voice aired aloud throughout every nook and cranny of the facility.

"Alert. Temperature regulation offline. Power array overload in six minutes, forty seven seconds." the monotone message declared followed shortly by a fairly desperate sounding alarm which sounded off at regular intervals.

As Sonic began accelerating, he quickly ditched the spent detonator and yanked his glove back to talk into his communicator.

"The temp-regulators are down guys. System says you've got about six minutes and forty seconds before it's lights out!"

Sonic pushed himself hard to climb the steel tube using only his outward force as a means of traction. Destroying the temperature regulator resulted in the powering down of every last fan in all of the ventilation shafts connected to the enormous node chamber deep below ground. Unfortunately this also meant that the heat from the nodes was no longer being properly expelled as Sonic was already beginning to feel the effects. The thick air was becoming warm and moist eventually making Sonic break a sweat as he gradually spiraled upward through the ventilation.

Suddenly, amidst the rhythmic echoing of his tapping sneakers, a new sound broke the pattern. Hydraulics whined and metal whirred and clicked into place. Sonic looked up the pipe to see that select square tiles of metal siding had risen out of the wall revealing themselves to be hidden defensive turrets underneath. A face of worry came over the sprinting hedgehog as he instantly realized how vulnerable he was. He was, for the moment, forced to continue his spiraling ascent as trying to suddenly change directions would result in a sure drop back down the shaft. His path would be predictable and the only real things he could even slightly change were his speed and ascent angle.

The heads of the turrets turned at the blue blur, briefly began following his movements and opened fire. Condensed plasma bolts sprayed in Sonic's direction, nearly tagging him a number of times. Thinking fast, he realized the only way to survive would be to take the turrets out of commission. Sonic aimed for the nearest gun and quickened his pace. Before plowing into it he rolled into a tight saw blade, cleaving the auto-defense turret in half between its two glowing barrels. Coming out of this roll Sonic nearly lost his footing, frantically scrambling to regain control as his gaze dizzily examined the seemingly endless fall below him.

"Alert. Temperature regulation offline. Power array overload in five minutes." the computer's voice chimed again over the blaring siren.

The red lighting, rising temperature and sporadic laser fire in the shaft were doing Sonic no favors towards his stress level as he attacked two more turrets. He was starting to openly pant, wiping his face as he dashed upward through the motionless fans. Sonic gasped a breath of relief upon seeing the top of the shaft in range. As he dashed for the last leg of the ventilation tube, three more turrets deployed near the rim of the entrance. In a desperate surge, he leapt across the shaft to smash into a turret from above. Kicking off of this gun he smashed into yet another turret just a little further up. For his finale, Sonic streaked through the air and grabbed the last turret from behind, causing it to rotate to try and get a lock on its speedy blue target. The harder it tried to follow the faster it spun, twirling Sonic in a circle perpetually behind it. Once he deemed he had enough momentum, Sonic timed his released of the gun and was flung up and out of the ventilation shaft.

The arch of Sonic's flight through the air was very close to the ground floor of the surface complex. Ungracefully he landed upon his side and rolled to a stop on the metal floor, too tired and too hot to care about showing off. The long cavernous room allowed some of the heat to escape out the grates on the roof, but those were designed to be used in conjunction with the fans which were now inactive. The ventilation facility's surface structure was quickly becoming an oven. Regardless the hedgehog lay on his back for a few seconds, long enough at least so he could catch his breath.

"Alert. Temperature regulation offline. Power array overload in four minutes."

Sonic picked himself up upon hearing the system computer call out again. Shaking off his duress, he scanned the walls for the entrance corridor that he had fought his way through earlier. After a few seconds of swinging his head around, Sonic began to wonder why he couldn't find the bright light of the end of the hallway. He could have sworn that where an exit once existed an imposing featureless wall now stood. It was then that he realized that his mind was not playing tricks on him; that indeed a wall had been deployed from the floor to seal off the entire end of the building that housed the exit.

It was clear to Sonic that he had been had. He had fallen into a trap if ever there was one, and he was going to have a really bad day if he didn't come up with a solution fast. After a frustrated fist pounded against the erected obstruction, Sonic moved for his communicator.

"I think I've been trapped in the building I've just set to explode." Sonic worriedly jested to the rest of his team. "A giant blast door is blocking the way out and I'm slowly cooking alive."

Tails called in over the signal. "The others are too far away, but I'll try to make a new door for you. How much time before the nodes go critical?"

Sonic was about to open his mouth to respond when the computer monitoring system blared out overhead again.

"Alert. Temperature regulation offline. Power array overload in three minutes."

Sonic could not control his perspiration as he responded to the young pilot. "You get that? Three minutes."

The volume of the Tornado's engine over the communicator increased as it throttled up to maximum speed. "I'll make it in time Sonic. Just hang in there!"

The blue hedgehog lowered his arm, still continuing to look up at the height of the blast door. In spite of the rising temperature and the prospect of being blown to pieces no larger than grains of sand, Sonic seemed primarily annoyed with the fact that he'd have to wait idly by to be rescued.

"I don't think this day could possibly get any worse." He said to himself aloud, whining nasally.

"Oh I'm sure it can, Sonic." A low synthetic voice coldly responded from behind.

There was no time to react, no time for Sonic to spin around, not even time enough to release a startled yell. Before he could lift his foot an inch off the ground something cold, jagged and impossibly fast slammed him against the blast door. The impact knocked the wind out of Sonic who then crumpled to the ground wheezing. From here his assailant came into focus from the ground up. Shiny red metallic feet, elevated off the floor as if hovering. Slender hinged legs. Silver hands with razor sharp claws. A humming jet engine intake. Lastly, violently red irises glaring down upon him with murderous intent. Sonic scrambled to his feet to the best of his ability, albeit the difficulty he had simply inhaling. Whatever his intentions may have been, Sonic found himself cut off again as the killer machine checked him against the blast door a second time, this time holding him there by the throat with its forearm.

Sonic brought his hands to the machine's arm to pry it off his neck as he gurgled in disbelief. "M-Metal Sonic?!"

Indeed the blue devil of Stardust Speedway was standing before Sonic, in the flesh as it were, with its arm pressed firmly against his windpipe. It seemed to utter a sickened grunt upon hearing its organic double speak its name and proceeded to throw Sonic to the ground using the arm that once pinned him to the giant door. Once Metal Sonic's prey was down, it delivered a forceful kick to Sonic's stomach which launched him back to his feet. As he landed upright, the metal hedgehog immediately resumed pinning him to the door by his throat, causing him to gag in pain.

"Don't you ever call me that again, cretin." the sinister doppelganger commanded. "I am designated as Metal now."

Again the system control voice sounded off over the building's speakers. "Alert. Temperature regulation offline. Power array overload in two minutes."

Metal seemed to acknowledge the message as if it was being broadcasted for his ears only. His eyes remained fixed on Sonic's straining face as he tried desperately to gulp down breaths of air.

"I'm going to enjoy watching you burn alive." the robot maliciously growled.

Sonic didn't care to figure out why Metal had trapped himself in a building that was about to explode, or how Metal could even be there in the first place. He just needed to get that crushing vice grip off of his throat. His eyes dashed around the building's cavernous interior for anything that might help when he noticed the grated roof. Through the metal mesh, he could see something in the sky rapidly approaching. In an instant, whistling screams screeched over the sound of the alarm followed by loud detonations which shook the walls of the building. As the Tornado roared overhead along the length of the building visible through the line of grates, Metal snapped his head back to survey the damage.

The blue hedgehog saw his chance and lifted both his legs off the ground, placing his feet squarely against Metal's shoulders. Pushing against the wall, he kicked Metal off causing him to stumble backward just long enough to start running. Sonic could hear the robot bellow in rage behind him as it fired up its thruster to give chase, but he was just starting to recover from nearly being choked into unconsciousness. Coughing, Sonic examined the hole that Tails had just punched in the ceiling. Iron beams were twisted downward like bent fingers and shredded steel sheeting littered the floor below. The hole itself was rather high up, but Sonic could see that if he hit one of the nearby catwalk ramps fast enough he'd be launched towards the twisted beams which he could then use to run up and out of the hole. The only problem was that he would have to somehow have to recover enough strength to do this while the structure was becoming a steam cooker and while a sadistic machine was threatening to rip him limb from limb.

The layout of the building was centered around the long row of ventilation tubes leaving a sort of extended rectangular perimeter that Sonic would need to use to build up the speed needed to hit the ramp. Metal was boosting along next to Sonic within seconds as he attempted to run his lap. Sonic coughed a little as he watched him drag his claws along the ground, sparking against the metallic floors in doing so. Without warning he strafed in towards Sonic throwing a flurry of swipes with his now glowing hot razor sharp fingertips. The blue hedgehog did his best to dodge the attacks but was too overheated and too battered to evade them all. For an instant it was as if someone had swiped sharp shards of ice across his arm, but the stinging burns quickly set in while Sonic shouted with pain. Sonic realized he wasn't going to make the lap back to the catwalk without some sort of boost to keep him a step ahead of Metal. He thought about the power ring well in the lake next to Knothole and how his backpack was empty of said rings.

"Alert. Temperature regulation offline. Power array overload in sixty seconds."

Sonic's face suddenly lit up. He may not have had a power ring, but he did have the chili dog he packed. Sonic quickly reached behind him into one of the covered pouches of his satchel removing a small item wrapped in a white cloth. It made his heart ache knowing what he would have to do, but if it meant survival it had to be done. Metal appeared again at his side whilst he was hurriedly unwrapping the chili dog. Metal taunted Sonic as he swooped in again for another attack.

"Consider that your last meal, meat-bag." snarled the cobalt killer while rearing back with his claws.

The stained white cloth of the chili dog's wrap fluttered off behind the racing pair as Sonic unexpectedly hopped towards his copy, rearing back an attack of his own.

"But Metal, this meal's for you!" the hedgehog jeered while splattering the positively stuffed chili dog across Metal's view screen.

The chunky saucy slop was so thick that the bun and link actually managed to stick to the machine's face. Metal made a more robotic noise consisting of scrambled beeps and electrical whines as he missed his attack on Sonic by a mile. Metal threw his feet ahead of himself and slammed on the breaks hard while he swiped at his face in frustration. With his metal hands, it was like trying to wipe away ketchup with knives.

Sonic looked behind himself as he sped up unchallenged, his grin instantly returning.

"Alert. Temperature regulation offline. Power array overload in thirty seconds."

Sonic bolted forward through the blistering heat of the facility. Gritting his teeth, he lined himself up with the ascending catwalk ramp and hit it as hard as he could. Sonic was now airborne, sailing towards the downward slanted beams coming from the hole that Tails had punched in the ceiling. Pipes and control valves were starting to rupture creating steam geysers and the whole building seemed to begin shaking while he streaked through the air. After what seemed like hours of hang time, Sonic's feet made contact with the iron beams. He wasted no time in shooting up the metal framework and out of the hole in the ceiling like a bullet. The air outside, though polluted and thick was nonetheless cool. Sonic filled his lungs before streaking down the side of the building and back onto the filthy alleyways of Robotropolis.

Sonic was hurting, tired and still far too hot to run as fast as he possibly could, but he managed to make it a good two hundred feet away from the complex before time ran out. The initial shock wave knocked him off his feet sending him tumbling to the ground rolling over and over. When he came to a stop, he looked back to see a great fireball growing outward and upward from the site of the building. Fire billowed out of what remained of the ventilation tubes like giant blow torches eating greedily at the sky above them. The inferno burned so brightly that it seemed to make everything around it grow dim.

The bruised and bloodied hedgehog rose to his feet, warily watching the fires burn. He thought that he had destroyed Metal Sonic once before, and wanted to make sure that he didn't come back this time either. His race to defeat Metal at Stardust Speedway had culminated with the seemingly utter destruction of the once emotionless machine via hydraulic press. One way or another it would seem that somehow Metal Sonic had been rebuilt, and that he was definitely upgraded as far as intelligence was concerned. Sonic never remembered Metal as being able to speak verbally, nor capable of feeling anything; the enjoyment of watching Sonic cook for instance. While the blue hedgehog gazed hypnotically at the flames, the communicator on his wrist crackled to life again nearly scaring him off the ground.

Tails sounded frantic. "You make it out of there Sonic?! Say something, please!"

"Holy cow, I'm sorry!" Sonic quickly apologized for leaving his adopted brother hanging. "I'm fine Tails, you really saved by butt back there!"

Though the young fox said nothing, his beaming pride was almost palpable over the communicator frequency. Sonic turned around to look towards the location of the secondary power node complex with a smirk on his face.

"Is the rest of the team having as much luck as me?" Sonic asked somewhat sarcastically.

Sally's voice came in. "Bunnie and I just got through dealing with the guards out front of the secondary complex and we're getting these doors open."

"But princess I did help a little bit, non?" Antoine timidly asked in the background.

Sally sighed a little bit to herself. "Well I suppose tripping on your own boots and falling on your face constitutes as good a distraction as any. Thank you Antoine."

Antoine could be heard giddily laughing at his leader's praise despite her annoyed undertones. "Oui, my nose still hurts a bit zough..."

Sonic chuckled a bit to himself. "You guys watch yourselves in that place; I just got through dealing with--"

Unusual noises began to burst from the communicator. Sonic, momentarily puzzled, listened carefully. Antoine loosed a very feminine shriek before Sally's voice hollered through the signal.

"Sonic! Come here quick, we need you help--" To Sonic's horror, the communicator signal was plunged into silence. His head whipped back at the towering blaze to see if he had somehow missed something. Surely enough, a faint trail of flame unlike any other seemed to lead away from the blast zone into the maze of buildings surrounding it. Sonic became positively hysterical.

"Sal?! SAL!" He screamed into his device only to be met with more of that awful silence. Once again, there was no time to waste as Sonic blasted off in the direction of the secondary complex.


	8. Chapter 8: The Sadistic

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Chapter 8: The Sadistic

* * *

Robotropolis had been plunged into an uncharacteristic stillness after the node complex went critical. The gurgling voice of the city was replaced only with the sound of the filthy air whipping across Sonic's face and the pattering of his shoes making contact with the ground as he bolted for the secondary generator building.

Tails' voice piped up on the communication frequency. "I'm heading to the second complex right now Sonic!"

"I need you to keep a safe distance on this one Tails." said Sonic gruffly while pushing his legs to their limit.

He didn't want to tell Tails about Metal. To the young fox, Metal Sonic was just a character from one of his favorite stories and there was no way Sonic could tell how he'd take the news that this infamous villain had appeared. Sonic had even opted to make no mention of the doppelganger to his team upon returning from the speedway as the whole experience seemed too personal for his liking. Other than Tails, the only other person in Knothole who knew about Metal was Amy Rose, the girl the machine had used as bait two years ago before Sonic saved her and brought her to live in the village. She was so quiet and shy that people initially thought she was mute, and even to the current day preferred to hardly ever speak; let alone about her past.

Sonic kept his focus on the matter at hand and continued to instruct the young pilot. "Keep the skies clear of swatpods and I'll handle the problem here on the ground, okay bud?"

Tails reluctantly agreed. "Fine. I'll be circling overhead."

The vexed hedgehog sprinted down alleyways and across small stretches of metallic wasteland. His breathing was sporadic, his fists were clenched so tight that it hurt, and if he had gritted his teeth any harder they were probably likely to crack. Sonic somehow knew as he was watching the complex go up in flames that Metal had survived. There wasn't a doubt in his mind about it really; it was just that he figured the sadistic machine would disappear for a period of time while it licked its wounds as it apparently had done before. Such was not the case today, as Sonic grievously understood. If Metal was able to make it from the explosion to the secondary complex in the amount of time that he had spent chatting with his team, the robot would have had to have been in near perfect working order. How Metal was able to manage this after being at ground zero was completely beyond the frantic hedgehog's jumbled comprehension.

Sonic arrived at the secondary power distribution complex just in time for city-wide power to be restored. The lights that were dotted across the looming forms of Robotropolis' buildings flickered back to life and the low rumbling churn from beneath the city resumed. At the facility's entrance lay two mangled swatbots, still occasionally spewing sparks from their ruptured plating. The tower that Bunnie had demolished had landed close to this location producing a roaring fire behind the complex that filled the surrounding sky with dancing embers and orange haze. With overwhelming anxiety Sonic looked to the bunker doors that sealed the building only to see that they remained shut with no sign of Bunnie's prying method bent into them.

"Soneek!" Antoine's terrified voice cried from above. "Up here! Mon Dieu, you must help us!"

Sonic's focus zipped towards the roof of the complex. Dangling by the back of his collar pinned into the face of the building a few stories up was Antoine. His own saber had been shoved through the back of his uniform deep in between two plates of steel siding and was the only thing keeping him from falling to his death. His hands were clasped around the handle for dear life, desperately trying to keep his weight off of the fabric lest it tear against the sword's back edge. Above Antoine up on the roof stood Metal, ominously silhouetted by the raging inferno behind him. Only his horrible glowing red eyes could be clearly distinguished.

The metal menace pointed down at Sonic with a slender razor bladed digit. "You've made it just in time." The malicious machine sounded almost gleeful.

Using his foot, Metal rolled the limp figure of Bunnie Rabbot towards the roof's ledge. She screamed in agony as he did so, pounding against the metal plate with her organic fist, eyes winced shut. "H-he shoved this big ol' spike 'n mah robotic limbs—" She screamed again, despite her efforts to compose a coherent sentence. "He disabled 'em but they hurt like none othuh!"

Sonic was quickly loosing his cool. At this point the only thing that seemed to equal his anger was the overwhelming terror of seeing his friends in very real mortal danger.

Sonic bellowed skyward to his nemesis. "Let them go, or I swear I'll make you pay!"

Metal tilted his head in careful observation of Sonic's words. "You'll make me pay?" the murderous machine inquired with his deep taunting voice. "Does this mean you attach a monetary value to the lives of these creatures?"

Before Sonic could bark back in rebuttal Metal reached out behind and yanked a barely conscious Sally Acorn out in front of himself. As if it were a dance, he spun her so her back faced him before holding her close to his torso with one arm. She wasn't standing on her own; rather Metal was simply holding her up and allowing her legs to hang limply while her feet made contact with the steel roof. Sonic gasped as she moaned incoherently with her head hanging down over metal's arm. The machine peered over her shoulder down at Sonic.

"How much is this pretty little thing worth to you then?" the machine asked with vicious cheer.

Using his free hand he supported Sally's chin so she could keep her head up. He then began to lovingly run the backs of his cold serrated fingers along her cheek in a manner that perfectly resembled tenderness, though his other arm forcefully assured that she would be unable to move should she wake up.

The hedgehog's buttons were being played like a piano. Sonic clenched his fists as his stance became wider and lower to the ground. Just before he could blast towards the building to ascend its wall, Metal jerked his hand and adjusted his grip on the princess. His claws were now calmly poised over her neck, gently tapping her flesh as if to wave a dismissive finger at Sonic.

Metal ran a single razor tipped finger across her neck simulating a slitting motion. "I'm pretty sure you know that I would do it, hedgehog." the cobalt machine warned.

Sonic grudgingly relaxed his posture before yelling up at the roof of the facility. "You may have changed a lot, but I know that all you really want is the same. You've baited me to you, there's no need to hurt them!"

Sonic never thought he'd see the day, but genuine laughter poured out of the machine. The hedgehog's fur stood on end as Metal's voice cackled in amusement.

"Oh yes, rest assured; the moment I tear the life out from your diseased hide will be the highlight of my existence. But, as you've so adequately put it, I've changed a lot since we last met. Two years ago at Stardust Speedway I would have opted to self-terminate without incident following your murder."

Metal shifted his claws from gently tapping Sally's neck to wrapping them around her throat, threatening to rip it out. "But you refused to die. I can't begin to describe how much that offended me. Now, thanks to my new outlook on existence, killing you simply won't cut it anymore. I need to make sure you suffer before the end; that you beg for the death you should have received two years ago."

The blue hedgehog felt ill, like lead weights were in his stomach. He recognized that there was nothing he could do without Metal being able to react first. Nothing that is, except to try and keep the evil machine talking instead of acting.

"It's not that simple is it?" Sonic deduced. "If that was all you had in mind, you would have killed my friends by now."

Metal again tilted his head. "You're right. Things are never quite this simple, at least not anymore. These specimens still breathe because I have decided that I'm not going be the one who designates who lives and dies." His eyes flashed with an intense red before he continued. "You will have that honor."

Sonic recoiled. "You… you're sick."

"And you're running out of time." Metal cut in.

The malicious machination tightened his grip on Sally's neck causing her to gasp weakly. His claws broke her skin causing a minute amount of blood to slowly drip down from beneath the razor-sharp tips of his fingers. Sonic made a startled step forward, his face becoming visibly desperate.

"I'll save you the time you'd waste bartering for their lives." the machine offered. "Either you pick one of your filthy companions to be sent to the grave or I'll kill them all. Slowly."

Metal's attention moved to examine Sally's face. He poured over her expression, clearly in pain and struggling to breathe with her neck in his grasp. He closely studied the nature of her suffering for a few seconds before sending his gaze back to the blue hedgehog.

"Tic-tock, Sonic."

Franticly the hedgehog attempted to reason with the robot. "Let me think for a sec! Just please, don't hurt her!"

"That's not the way we play this game." Metal coldly responded. "I didn't tell you to choose who I should spare, I told you to choose who I should kill."

Sonic was panicking. He knew he could make it up to the roof, but Metal would surely execute Sally before he could do anything about it. His head swiveled as if searching for some extraordinary door that would offer an escape from this nightmare, but of course no such door existed. There were only the fires which continued to roar, raining embers in all directions. It was as if Sonic had stumbled into hell.

For a moment, Sonic actually went through the options in his head. Desperately he weighed the consequences of his choices. Bunnie was a fighter, vital muscle to their team. Sally offered leadership to the Freedom Fighters, a symbol of hope in the form of a living heir to the throne and to Sonic, something far more irreplaceable. Sonic tried to stay far away from thinking about him, knowing that the choice would make itself obvious, but Antoine wrestled his way into Sonic's mind.

Though Antoine had made considerable headway from the early days of sheer paralyzing cowardliness, he was still a clumsy nervous wreck for the duration of most missions. His worth was derived more from his father's contribution to fighting in the Great War as an admiral. Apart from the sword that he carried, Antoine could easily be viewed as just another pair of hands.

Sonic uttered a loud grunt of frustration as he attempted to stamp out such thinking from his head. He looked up to his tormenter silently looking for some shred of mercy that he knew would not exist. It was then that a small shape attached to Sally's boot caught Sonic's eye. He didn't have to think twice.

"Nicole!" the hedgehog shouted up to Metal. "I pick Nicole."

The machine, though facially expressionless, clearly exhibited confusion. "You're pulling my servos. My files indicate Nicole is a super-computer with a form of prototype artificial intelligence. Such a machine is not present."

Sonic smirked a little bit. "Check again, Metal. She's on Sally's calf."

As Metal looked down, he was taken aback by how compact the little grey box was. Bending slightly he removed his hand from Sally's throat and reached down, pulling the handheld off of her boot. With a flick of the wrist he opened it and began navigating its controls with his thumb. After a few seconds he spoke again, but not to Sonic.

"I can hardly believe that you would end up seeking me out." He said in a surprised tone. "The fat Overlander's records indicated that several of his networks had been repeatedly tapped by a cybernetic entity called Nicole. He had calculated based off of your capabilities that you were a large stationary unit disguised within the city limits as some mundane monitoring station."

Nicole's synthetic female voice chimed up. "Happy to see I'm famous in certain circles." The computer joked. "Shame I can't find anything on record about you though."

Metals eyes flashed red for a couple of seconds as he threw a hateful glare towards Sonic. "You didn't tell your pals about me? That really hurts."

Sonic remained silent. He worried that cracking jokes would only encourage Metal to kill Sally who seemed to be coming around ever so slightly in the machine's arm lock. Metal disregarded his adversary momentarily to continue navigating Nicole's interface. Suddenly his thumb stopped flickering across her buttons.

"Well, what do we have here?" spouted the machine with dark fascination.

His attention returned to Sonic once again, eyes glowing brightly. "Tell you what. I'll spare your friends up here on this roof, for now. I'll even give your little girlfriend her glorified palm-pilot back. All you need to do for me is throw your wrist communicator up here."

Nicole's voice quickly cut in. "Don't do it. He's going to—"

Metal folded shut the little computer before it could finish. "It's your radio or the princess's lovely jugular. I really do suggest you toss it up here before I reconsider what my acceptable levels of leniency are defined as."

Sonic heard Nicole try to warn him, but the hedgehog could not pass up this trade. There was no doubt in his mind that Metal had something sinister in store involving the wrist device. If there were any other options he would have pursued them but quite frankly, there were none.

Warily, Sonic pulled the cuff of his glove back to access his communicator. After unlatching it from his wrist, Sonic forcefully heaved the device into the air towards Metal. A high pitch whine came from the cobalt robot as his eyes tracked the ascending trinket of metal and leather. As the device reached the arch of its flight, two red beams of condensed energy leapt out of the machine's glowing irises striking the communicator as it hung in the air. It blasted into several tiny pieces with a surprisingly loud pop.

This was something else that Sonic had never seen Metal do before, but something he recognized from another mechanical terror he and his friends had faced off against. E.V.E. used similar focused energy discharges as the primary weapons of her many forms with devastating results. They worked by destabilizing the very atoms of solid matter that they landed upon, causing them to erupt as if they were an explosive cocktail. Various substances would react differently, but most either went up in flames or exploded.

Metal Sonic huffed in satisfaction before changing the way he held Sally. He allowed her to bend backward over the crook of his cold arm so that he could work with both hands. With Nicole in one hand, Metal made a fist with the other and bent it down revealing a small device panel directly in front of the plated cover of his forearm. Sonic watched anxiously as a slender silver spike protruded from above his downward pointed fist parallel with his arm.

"You said you would let them go!" the hedgehog protested.

Metal looked to Sonic with annoyance. "And I will. Worry not, hedgehog, soon you will have everything you deserve delivered to your hands."

Without further delay, Metal proceeded to sink the needle shaped spike into one of Nicole's interface ports. Immediately his head tilted back and the lights of his eyes seem to shiver and vibrate.

The robot's voice became even more distorted than usual. "Ah… there you are."

Metal's language suddenly converted into a scrambled storm of beeps and whines before it seemed to hammer out the pitch and tone of a very familiar voice. Holding Nicole to his face, the machine activated her communicator and loosed a perfect reproduction of Sonic's voice.

"Tails!" the machine called with feigned desperation. "I'm in big trouble! I need you to come to me as fast as you can!"

The young fox called back instantly. "On my way, Sonic!"

Not thinking, Sonic reached for his communicator to negate Metal's deception only to quickly remember it had been destroyed. The blue hedgehog snapped and with a furious scream he charged forward to race up the steeply sloped face of the building, seemingly blind to the threats and warnings that held him back previously.

Taking note of Sonic's advance, Metal raised his leg and placed a foot on Sally's back. The arm he had been using to hold her up swung off quickly as he pushed her away and over the ledge of the building.

"Catch."

Her form was limp as a rag doll as she seemed to hang above Sonic in the sky. The hedgehog's stomach fell into his feet as he watched Antoine throw a hand off of the hilt of his saber to grab hold of any part of the princess that he could as she sailed by him. With a strained yell, the coyote was able to snatch a hold of Sally's wrist before being yanked at by her weight.

"Sacré bleu!" he yelled in agony feeling his muscles being stretched up and down his extended arms. His saber creaked in between the plates of metal siding as it was wrenched downward. Sonic raced up the wall towards them, but another figured rolled off of the roof and onto the backdrop of the brown sky. Bunnie was quite awake and terribly horrified as she plummeted past Antoine and Sally screaming, unable to use her limbs to fly.

Sonic had no time to answer any thought in his head other than pure instinct. Timing his jump, Sonic pushed himself off of the face of the structure and slammed into Bunnie in midair. The impact slowed her decent, albeit knocking the wind out of her. He had hoped he would be able to move her further off course than he did, but Bunnie's metal limbs made her much heavier than a normal person her size. After her mid-fall bump with Sonic, the duo fell three stories into a pile of garbage and scrap piled near the complex.

Metal continued to whine and jerk for a while as he interfaced with Sally's computer. "Wow!" the machine exclaimed. "You get around a lot, don't you?"

Efficiently, Metal pulled the slender spike out of Nicole and retracted it back within its sleeve under his forearm cover. Looking at the grey box in his claws his eyes shone bright red.

"Was it good for you too?" the machine cruelly mocked as he tossed the little computer over the ledge towards Sonic and Bunnie's junk pile. The hedgehog had to scramble to his feet and make a small leap with outstretched hands to keep Nicole from smashing upon the ground, but was able to save the little handheld. Before he could check it or Bunnie for damage, he heard Antoine's frantic screams from above.

"Soneek! I cannot be holding her for much longer!" His face was pouring sweat as he clung desperately to the sword and to Sally's wrist like a link in a chain. "I am slipping! She eez slipping! Zee blade eez slipping! Everyzing eez slipping too much!"

He tossed Nicole over to Bunnie who lay groaning in the refuse pile and took off. Like blue lightning Sonic was at the foot of the building and racing up its face again. He could hear the metal in Antoine's saber creaking against its placement between the steel plates as it was slowly coming loose. The further Sonic ran strait up the more he began to slow down against gravity, but he pushed himself just as far as he needed to wrap an arm around Sally's waist.

In that brief moment, it seemed to all as if Sonic were hovering as his upward motion ceased before giving way to is downward plunge. It was at this time that Sonic began to hear the faint hum of Tails' biplane rapidly approaching their location. The young fox was flying into a trap and there was nothing that Sonic could do to prevent it. A flood of emotion was overcoming the blue hedgehog as he furiously pushed with his legs off of the face of the building at its halfway mark. Both Sonic and Sally barreled into the pile of garbage that he had landed in before with Bunnie, landing without much grace but without injury either.

Metal was well aware of Tails approach, and was even able to determine exactly where he was in the choking black air above the inferno. Turning to face the searing blaze atop of his building turned pedestal, he raised both of his metal arms up and at his sides as if preparing to hug a mountain.

He laughed low and wickedly. "Come to me, little fox."

Tails would be there in a matter of seconds Sonic realized. He prayed that Antoine would be able to hold on for just a bit longer so he could stop Metal from springing whatever trap he had in store, but there would be no such luck today. Antoine's sword, still in his fingers, finally shifted and pried itself out from between the plates of siding under the coyote's weight. The steel of his sword rang loudly as if it were screaming along with its wielder on its way to the ground.

There wasn't time to slow his decent the way he had with Bunnie before. Antoine skidded and bounced along the steep slope of the building a couple times before Sonic rounded wide and leapt up darting across the face of the building near the ground. Like a high speed football tackle, he pummeled and wrapped himself around Antoine as tight as he could to redirect the downward motion. The effort proved to be enough as a rattled Antoine landed on Sonic as they met the ground entering a long lasting roll that threw them off of each other.

As Sonic lifted his head to get his bearings he heard a high pitch whine coming from atop the building over the noise of the approaching airplane. The hedgehog threw an open hand skyward towards the roof screaming the name of his adopted little brother as Metal opened fire.

Two condensed laser beams from his eyes flashed upward and into the thick veil of smoke towards the sound of the approaching biplane. In that instant a detonation could be heard before the shape of the Tornado came blasting through the ember riddled cloud. From the ground Sonic could see that bright orange flames were spewing from the front of the plane and along its side while trailing smoke. Suddenly he heard Tails' voice call in over Antoine's communicator.

"Argh, I'm hit! I can't control—" the radio went silent.

Sonic watched in horror as the red biplane screamed across the sky beyond view behind a line of buildings. Within seconds a loud crash sounded out followed by an explosion paired with a fireball that momentarily rose above line of surrounding buildings. Sonic's eyes widened, his pupils contracted and his heart slammed within his chest. With a frantic whimper he crawled over to Antoine to grab at his arm.

The coyote yelped as Sonic yanked at his sleeve to reveal his communicator, insensitive to the fact that Antoine's arms had been stretched from holding Sally and battered upon his landing. All Sonic could see in his mind was that fireball over the top of a tall dark horizon. He pressed on the transmit button and began yelling.

"Tails?! TAILS?!" he called desperately. "Please tell me you're alright, lil' bro, please!"

No response came to comfort him. Tears began to well in his eyes as he threw his gaze upward to the roof of the building. As if he had been waiting for Sonic's eyes, Metal was already staring back down at him. The murderous machine knelt down to point his chest mounted thruster forward and as the turbine began to spin he called down to Sonic.

Metal mimicked the sound of inhaling through clenched teeth. "Ooh, I'll bet he's a fine mess after that. The view from up here was spectacular."

Sonic seemed at a loss, unable or unwilling to get up off his hands and knees; as if holding incredibly still would just make time itself stop. The sound of Metal's thruster bursting into high power seemed to jostle him ever so slightly. The machine dug his claws into the ledge of the roof to keep him grounded while his thruster volleyed blue plasma vapor behind him.

"I'll let my staff console you in your time of loss. I however have a schedule to keep." Metal nodded. "I hope we'll be seeing each other again very soon."

With a loud boom, Metal scorched off like a missile towards the crash site leaving a faint trail of burnt atmosphere behind him. On cue, the doors to all of the buildings surrounding the small courtyard opened, allowing the hulking forms of swatbot after swatbot to pour through them.

The rebel quartet was surrounded within seconds. Sonic looked around to see the glints of innumerable red visors and guns all pointed directly at him and his friends, causing his hands to clench into fists against the ground. At the end of a long exhale, Sonic quietly murmured to the robot horde.

"Who's getting scrapped first?"


	9. Chapter 9: Crash and Burn

* * *

Chapter 9: Crash and Burn

* * *

The twisted, flaming wreckage of the Tornado lay strewn across a large alley in between two tall buildings within inner Robotropolis. Pools of fuel burned smoothly across the flat ground and bits and pieces of scorched metal joined the random bits and pieces of garbage that surrounded.

Amidst the noisy flames a small clatter broke out. A piece of the airplane's rudder scraped along the ground as the shape of a small yellowish fox pushed it aside, dragging himself along the ground on his back by one elbow and a leg. Tears filled Tails' eyes while he tried his best to stifle the pain induced outbursts. Exhausted and nearly incapable of moving any further without blacking out from the excruciating agony of his burns and broken bones, he collapsed on his back. The crash played over and over in his frazzled mind.

…

Tails heard Sonic radio in for him to come as quickly as he could. Sonic was in some sort of danger obviously, the fox could understand that much. With blind determination he took his airplane in fast and low, not thinking about the fact that Sonic didn't bother to specify what was wrong or even what he should do other than just show up. His big brother needed help, and to Tails that was all that mattered.

Tails knew that the team had run into trouble at the second power complex, and that Sonic had raced there to help. With that in mind, the fox flew his airplane towards the power facility. The fires from the collapsed tower had thrown up an effective smokescreen around the complex forcing Tails to pull up slightly as he roared through the noxious haze. He didn't even make it through to the other side of the dark cloud when something hit his plane… hard.

It had taken the young pilot completely by surprise as the fuselage shook violently. The front end began to spit smoke and licking flames up at his face above the rim of the cockpit. He raised his arm to meekly shield himself and hit the transmit button in the dash of his vehicle. He only had enough time to stammer out that his plane had been hit before the controls became completely unresponsive. The world was spinning as his plane careened in a deadly curve towards the ground. Trailing smoke was causing him to gag with every horrified breath he sucked into his chest.

There wasn't time left for Tails to save the plane, there never was. The fur on his arm was already burnt away leaving his bare skin to begin searing. Unable to take the flames any longer he unbuckled himself and pushed out of the cockpit with his heals on the edge of his seat. Just as he saw himself separate from his burning plane he could see that he had made a terrible mistake in timing. The plane was not upright when he had thrown himself up and out. No, the plane's cockpit was pointed directly at the ground and Tails had just desperately flung himself towards it.

A cry of horror and pain slipped deep from the boy's throat as he began spinning his twin tails as hard as he could to try and slow his descent, but the small handful of seconds he had to do so were not enough. The momentum of the plane still carried him forward as he bounced on the paved metal of the inner city streets with a sickening crack. Tails skid and rolled for nearly one hundred feet, the forward energy mercilessly beating his limbs and head on the ground as he did so. He hadn't even finished sliding when the Tornado slammed into the ground ahead of him, erupting into surprisingly large fireball as its fuel tanks ruptured. Fire seemed to roll forward like a wave with a myriad of airplane parts being catapulted forward within it. Pieces of the rudder and side armor as well as other indistinct bits and pieces showered around the now motionless fox.

For a brief while, nobody would have second guessed that the boy had perished. Then all at once there were his heaving shoulders and the blood curdling screams of agony; his twelve year old voice spearing the air around him like a storm of needles. Weakly he looked down at his burnt right arm while swallowing more shouts, scorched black in large spots and still smoking. His glove had almost completely burned off, revealing his fingers had been burned in a manner similar but less severe than the rest of his arm.

Shakily he attempted to get to his feet only to be stopped by another sharp stabbing sensation in his knees. The pain took him by surprise causing him to shriek again before he tried to get a glance down his side. On his stomach it was quite difficult, but he could see that his legs were twisted over one another. It took him a couple seconds to actually make sense of what he was looking at before he realized that one of his legs had been bent forward beyond its limit at the knee. The speckled pink of a protruding bone didn't lie.

The fox's jaw dropped slowly, bottom lip quivering ever so faintly. His head bobbed a bit while he loosed a small cough before vomiting to his side. The bitter taste hung in Tails' mouth while tears began to pour freely from his eyes. Before he could sob he seemed to try and get a grip on himself.

_I'm a Freedom Fighter_, he reminded himself. _I'm trained to survive worse than this_.

With a few quick preparation breaths, Tails used his relatively good arm to roll himself over onto his back to untwist his legs. He bit his lower lip to stem the yelling, but it manifested itself through his nose instead. Looking down his body he could grasp a better picture of the severity of his injuries. His torso had suffered severe road rash from skidding along the ground for so long. He felt that the pain on his stomach was similar to that which splayed across his muzzle, so he cautiously he touched the right side of his stinging face. The fingertips of his white glove were stained with a pure deep red as he pulled them away.

_I'm trained to survive. I'm trained to survive. I'm trained to survive._

It seemed like the more he checked himself for injury the more doors for pain to flow through opened wide. Carefully testing his unsnapped right leg, he was relieved to find that it was for the most part uninjured. Kicking against the ground while reaching behind himself with his elbow, the fox began to drag himself away from the wreckage in search of cover.

He bumped into a sheet of thin metal that once covered the rudder of his plane before tiring out and lying down upon his back. He cradled his burnt arm atop his chest, unable to control the shaking limb. The sky he stared up at was a grotesque brown, darkened further by the plume of smoke stretching into it. Tails felt what he hoped was sweat matting the fur in and around his ears as they twitched, picking up a familiar sound.

To the residents of Knothole, a sonic boom was heavily affiliated with seeing the blue hedgehog returning home; a moment of joy and relief. It meant that help was on the way, and that you had friends with you. Tails desperately needed his friend.

_Sonic's coming. I'll be fine and we'll all go home. Sonic's coming…_

He was about to open his mouth to call out Sonic's name when it came into view. The cobalt machine could have easily fooled anyone at first glance at those speeds as he simply appeared to be a blue flash, but it was the sound that gave him away. It was like hearing one of Robotnik's freight jets storming down the dark alley way, totally unlike the clean sound of rushing air that followed Sonic. Tails thought it impossible that something as small as this object could make such a horrendous noise. The mysterious machine stopped just beyond the burning pools while the boy struggled to hide.

Tails reached over his body for the sheet metal he had touched earlier so he could pull it over himself. Only able to use one arm he tried his hardest to lift it off the ground so he could move it into position quietly, but the wobbly material flexed and scraped against the ground noisily. As uncontrollable fear kicked in, Tails dropped the metal blanket over himself as quickly as possible causing the sheet to rattle like fake thunder. From his viewpoint, the wounded fox could see through the gaps where the metal sheet didn't quite connect with the ground.

_It's happening again. _

Tails' breathing quivered before rushing into an enormous held breath as he watched from his little window to the rest of the world. The robot seemed to have been scanning the wreck before it heard the ruckus Tails had made. From his spot, he could see the slender legs of the machine approaching. It walked through the searing hot pools of flame like they weren't there.

_The night Robotnik took over…_

The automaton's feet clanked cold and sharp against the ground as it took deliberate steps closer and closer. The sonic boom still echoed in Tails' head which only filled his moment of terror with an incredible sadness to be reminded that Sonic was not here for him. The shiny red metal feet stopped just outside of his hiding spot.

_It's all happening again._

As the robot ripped the sheet metal off, Tails released the pressure in his chest and called out desperately for his brother. Two menacing red optical lights shone down on him from the tri-spiked head of this seemingly metal hedgehog. Standing there, still holding the piece of sheet metal in its claws, the cobalt machine simply continued to stare at Tails' mangled form while he squirmed weakly to drag himself away. Its head slowly turned to follow the bloodied fox as he whimpered, almost as if studying him. Without warning the machine's eyes became visibly brighter while it moved a step to catch the broken boy.

_Save me Sonic._

The machine knelt down next to Tails and wrapped its cold metal hand just above the gruesome fracture in his leg. The fox screamed loudly as its grip tightened sending pain shooting through his entire skeleton. The replicated hedgehog leaned in close to the boy's anguished face before it finally spoke.

"I was hoping that you would survive. You will be made ready for travel."

As slow and evilly as it had spoke, the machine took hold of Tails' leg below the break point and forcefully started pulling at it. Only a being as methodical and soulless as this machine could ignore the kinds of gut wrenching noises the poor boy produced while enduring that kind of torture. Tails' leg made yet another hair-raising crack that echoed in the tight space of the alley as the machine realigned and set the bone back into place.

Tails was finally silent, having passed out from the utter sensory overload. The metal hedgehog scanned him momentarily before scooping him up by the waist with one arm and slinging him over its shoulder. With a loud charge of its thruster the machine was gone along with Tails, rocketing along the ground towards the Egg Tower.

…

Sonic smashed and sawed through swatbot after swatbot as they continued to swarm in from all directions. His friends were all nearly incapacitated as they lay trying to recover from their hostage ordeal in a mound of scraps and other garbage. The blue hedgehog was a protective whirlwind keeping all hostiles from getting too close, mad with panic after watching his best friend plummet to the ground in a fiery plane crash.

There were no wisecracks or jokes, no cheering or battle cries as he speedily dispatched the metallic soldiers. There were only the furious clangs and groans of the battle. But as impressive as the mass destruction of swatbots was, more still poured out of the nooks and crannies of Robotropolis.

Antoine was holding Sally's head in his lap, fanning her face while screaming for her to wake up. "My princess! You must be awakening! Zere eez much peril!"

"An'twan…" Bunnie groaned off to the side, still trying to cope with the burning sensation coming from her disabled metal limbs. "Use yer canteen n' splash her."

The coyote grabbed his water canteen off his back satchel and spun the cap off quickly. "My apologies, princess." he sheepishly told her as he shook the open end of his water container at her face.

The ground squirrel coughed a couple times as her eyes fluttered open, still sore from having been in Metal's chokehold for so long. The first thing she saw was Antoine's face looking down at her with a sort of tense relief before singing praises to Bunnie for her excellent idea.

"Oh my… gosh." Sally moaned. "What was that thing that hit us?"

Bunnie pushed her torso up as far as she could with her one working arm. "I'll explain latuh, right now we need ta get movin! Sugah-hog's lost it; he's gone darn near feral to save us but he needs help!"

The cyborg rabbit suddenly interrupted herself with a painful wail. Taking a breath she tried to continue although stammering. "U-use Nicole ta… ta see what's wrong with mah limbs. Puh-please!"

Sally reached for her boot without a word, but couldn't find her computer. A bit groggily she looked around to see Antoine picking Nicole out of the heap and handing her over. With Nicole in hand, Sally shuffled to Bunnies' side, finding the small interface terminal in her robotic arm and plugging Nicole into it. The squirrel then flipped open the little computer and immediately began issuing it commands.

"Nicole, I need an assessment of malfunctions in Bunnies robotic limbs, now!"

Nicole answered first with a few beeping noises before continuing in an understandable language. "Bunnie's arm and legs have been infected by a set of highly advanced nano-machines. They are blocking all commands sent from her brain to her robotic limbs while simultaneously overloading her sensory adaptors, producing a burning sensation not unlike first hand accounts of having been set on fire.

"Calculate countermeasure!" Sally gasped loudly before taking a hold of Bunnie's organic hand. The two held each other tightly, eyes welling with salty tears. Antoine was flabbergasted, both by his inability to help his anguished friend as she writhed in agony and the proximity of the frenzied hedgehog's fight. Screws and small pieces of swatbots would fly into him occasionally, causing him to yelp anxiously. Nicole chimed up again after a few seconds of processing Sally's command.

"I cannot stop the nano-machines directly Sally. I can however influence them to leave Bunnie's limbs by using myself as bait, so to speak. I will then attempt to quarantine and neutralize them within myself, despite the obvious risk for self contamination. Regardless, this would be the fastest solution to her pain. What are your orders?"

With worry, Sally looked to Bunnie. The rabbit's normally soft compassionate eyes seemed crazed and her mouth bore tightly clenched teeth. Sally knew that the first thing Bunnie would always tell her was that she'd be fine and not to worry, but as the cyborg attempted to speak more pain wracked screams were all that left her lips. Sally, still holding her friend's hand, nearly broke down then and there. She whipped her head to Nicole and issued the command for her to begin extracting the nano-machines.

"Processing. Please try to hang on for approximately two point five minutes longer Bunnie." said Nicole in an attempt at consolation in her unnaturally calm voice. Antoine paled upon hearing how long Bunnie would have to experience pain on par with burning alive.

From up on the junk pile, Antoine could see Sonic running rings around them obliterating metal soldiers left and right as he did so, but the minions looked as though they would never stop pouring out of the doorways of the buildings that surrounded them. They needed to be cut off at the source, as even Sonic would soon need to catch his breath at this rate. In that instant he remembered the rotor-made explosives that were still in his satchel. Ripping the brown sack off his back, he dove inside with his arms pulling out several brick sized charges.

Sonic had been keeping up his non-stop rampage for minutes on end by now. Though quite successful so far, his quills were worn ragged and his lungs heaved oxygen into his blood like an engine struggling to inject fuel into its pistons. His body ached and screamed at him for every impact and dash he executed, to which he'd merely respond with a loud frustrated grunt. Every one of the swatbots' faces produced rage in him; he'd find himself occasionally ripping a long since disabled machine into pieces or dashing one's head against the ground into oblivion. He wanted to tear and rip at them in a way his hands could not articulate. He wanted to sink claws into their visors and rip out their wire-bundled necks with his teeth. More than anything he wanted them to _feel _every rupture breach and amputation he dealt them, but not a single swatbot could satisfy.

_Metal better be hoping that you're ok Tails…_

Sonic cleaved yet another robot down its vertical axis when he heard Bunnie's screams. The nightmare didn't end, but it was as if he had awoken regardless. Going into a horizontal slice near the ground, Sonic severed the legs of several robots as he spin dashed towards his friends. Coming to a brief stop, he found Sally working on Bunnie with Nicole atop the junk mound as well as Antoine trying to wave him down with arms full of detonation charges.

"Zee buildings!" Antoine yelled loudly. "Zey must be blown high as zee sky!"

Sonic quickly dispatched a couple robots that approached from behind in a blue streak of spinning quills before flashing by Antoine like a blast of strong wind. The coyote struggled to maintain proper footing against the gust before looking down to see that all of the charges he once held in his arms had been taken by the speeding hedgehog. Without a word and in near disbelief, Antoine looked up again to watch Sonic bowl his way strait through what seemed to be a solid wall of metal soldiers on his way to the first doorway. Most of the dark gray robots turned to chase him specifically, spouting off the usual "priority 1" alarm, but a still formidable number of units continued to converge on the scrap pile; laser banks ready.

Sally and Antoine were not used to swatbots that behaved as these did. They spoke not a single word and seemed to be oblivious of the standard priority designations Robotnik had mandated into all of his swatbots' programming, the protocols that encouraged them to try and kill Sonic on sight. The two freedom fighters barely had time to pull up a plate of scrap from the heap as a sort of blast shield against the barrage of shots that were now being hurled their way. Antoine held up this first plate while Sally quickly wrestled another out to hold against their flank with Bunnie between them.

"We won't be able to hold out like this much longer!" Yelled Sally over the sound of the bolts of energy spattering against the armor plating. "Do you have any charges left?!"

Antoine shook his head nervously. Neither of them noticed at first, but Bunnie weakly raised her organic hand. "I've got one moah…" she winced silently before continuing. "One moah y'all can use. I can feel Nicole workin' already; I won't be down much longuh."

Sally gently tugged Bunnie's satchel out from under her and produced from it a single detonation pack. Peering out over the corner of her protective scrap of armor plate, she could see that the contingent of robots had reached the foot of the mound and were beginning to try and climb it. She yanked her head back as shots zinged past her face and began to tamper with the explosive device. By pulling off a small microchip module, she was successful in turning the trigger activated bomb into an active contact grenade.

"Fire in the hole!" she cried out as she lobbed the pack over the top of her makeshift blast shield. Both Antoine and Sally pulled their plates of armor down to cover themselves and Bunnie as the device detonated at the bottom of the pile. These explosives were not meant to be used as close range weapons, rather as demolition charges. The concussive blast would likely have incapacitated the Freedom Fighters had they not been elevated on the heap and shielded under the thick metal, but it still managed to deafen them with an ear-splitting ring. Antoine and Sally peered out from under their cover at the destruction caused by the blast. Swatbots had been thrown everywhere, many of which were obliterated beyond recognition.

Slowly lifting the plates of armor off of themselves, the princess and royal guard looked to the horde of machines that continued to badger Sonic off towards the buildings surrounding the plaza. It actually startled Sally, not just Antoine when the front ends of four buildings suddenly shook following muffled yet violent bangs. Each doorway continued to collapse upon itself ejecting large clouds of dust and debris as they did so. The coyote breathed a sigh of relief as he bent his knees and fell to a sitting position.

"Merci monsieur Hedgehog, your timing could not be more—"

Before he could finish, a large hand of steel grabbed his neck from behind. Sally recoiled in horror as Antoine led by the neck, was rushed to the surface of the scrap heap with a noisy crash. The terrified coyote loosed a squeaky gurgle as what remained of a partially destroyed swatbot continued to clamp down on his throat. Most of its legs were missing, severed cleanly from mid thigh down. The right arm that once bore a laser weapon had been mangled leaving behind a menacing assortment of sharp steel shreds and sparking wires. Without its gun, it crawled all the way up the pile and had seized the nearest target it could. The macabre machination raised its shredded limb to bring it down like a mace upon Antoine's skull.

Before the limb could swing down, it was stopped with a loud metallic clank. Having extended her robotic arm, Bunnie held the swatbot's damaged limb in her synthetic grasp. The cyborg rabbit growled angrily at the robot.

"Leave his pretty lil' head alone, y'hear?"

Without any apparent effort, Bunnie whipped the machine around by its arm causing it to release Antoine's throat. By retracting her arm quickly, she dragged the damaged swatbot to a bludgeoning end as she smashed its dome shaped head down into its chest underfoot, all while lying on her back.

Antoine, though gasping and holding his throat, was ecstatic. "My cherie! You are in zee better feelings!"

Bunnie smiled meekly as she rose to her feet and unplugged Nicole from her arm. "Yes An'twan, I'm in much better feelings." She assured her verbally challenged friend kindly. "Thanks y'all, 'specially you Nicole."

A wide and comforted smile made its way across Sally Acorn's face as Bunnie delivered to her the small hand-held. "I'm so relieved to see you're okay." She opened Nicole and spoke aloud to her next. "How about you Nicole? Can you handle the nano-machines?"

"Pooling resources to contain foreign entities. Firewall effectiveness at ninety six percent." the computer answered calmly. "They are leaking into my systems at a minimal rate. I suggest that we return to Knothole quickly so that my systems may be thoroughly purged at Rotor's facility before any permanent damage occurs."

Right as Nicole finished speaking Sonic appeared at the bottom of the scrap heap. With no more swatbots to fight through, the anger was being entirely replaced with panic. His face was wrought with a kind worry that was bordered on sheer terror, his fur stained with machine lubricant and his quills frayed. He hesitated to speak, trying to make sure that he could hold back the breaks in his voice that would try to sneak up his throat.

"You guys get out of the city now, I'll get Tails! Run hard and don't look back!"

Bunnie moved towards the hedgehog to offer her assistance, but before a single word could be uttered he was gone. Sonic's blue form shrunk into the distance quickly and disappeared down an alleyway at the other end of the plaza.

Sally looked to the onward staring rabbit with a face of horrified concern she hadn't used since she saw her home of Castle Acorn wreathed in flame all those years ago. She hadn't been awake to see Tail's biplane come screaming out of the sky like a comet and could not imagine that the unthinkable may very well have happened. Bunnie turned to meet her mortified stare, seemingly dumbstruck. Her mouth hung open ever so slightly but her brow was wrinkled with fear.

"Tails...?" Sally finally gasped. Bunnie covered her mouth while she spoke, diverting her eyes in anxiety.

"Tails was… Tails got shot down. We dun' know if he's okay but I saw the explosion. Sally-girl… it didn't look good."

The two stood silently for what seemed like forever to Antoine. He was terrified as usual, but understood the dire nature of the situation. This made it that much harder to bring it up to his companions that they really had to get going like Sonic had asked without sounding like a coward.

"Mademoiselles, Soneek will find young Tails and bring heem home, of zis I am positeev." In an uncharacteristic boldness, he took a hold of Sally Acorn's trembling hand. "We must leave Robotropolees. More swatbots will be in zee hunting for us."

With Antoine initially leading them along, the three remaining Freedom Fighters tiredly made their way down the scrap mound, each wearing a face of distress and defeat. Once on relatively flat ground, the team made their way quickly and quietly across the swatbot littered plaza in the direction of the Great Forest and home.

…

Sonic bolted down causeways and rounded corners through the renewed stillness of inner Robotropolis. He wasn't sure exactly of where he was anymore; he only paid attention to the rising plume of smoke which acted as a kind of beacon looming over the roof tops. Within seconds he turned down a wide alleyway where he could see a bright fire burning far off at its end. His body was tattered from battle, his mind flayed with horrible dread, and his heart exhausted from the emotional trepidation that a single machine managed to inflict upon him, but Sonic pressed onward with every fiber of strength left in him.

The flames grew in size as he rapidly approached, eyes already scanning urgently for a sign of his dear friend. When the wreck came into easy viewing the blue hedgehog's legs almost gave out under him. He stumbled clumsily, slowing down until he was at a trot that any normal Mobian would have even called sluggish. His arms fell limp, flailing at his sides for a bit while he slowed down, eyes watering over as he saw the sheer carnage of the Tornado's remains.

If he hadn't been aware that Tails had crashed, it would have been nearly impossible for Sonic to even conceive that the burning amalgam of twisted metal could have once been an airplane. The only hints towards it's former appearance lay in the scraps that had been ejected and scattered about in the initial impact that were not scorched black in the petroleum-fueled inferno. Sonic swung his head around, not wanting to believe that the boy he swore to protect and guide as his younger brother could have been long since burnt to ashes. Tears flew off his cheeks as he jerked himself in different directions. Sonic began to hoarsely call out at the top of his lungs.

"TAILS!?"

He was answered only by his echo traveling down the alley bouncing back and forth off the metal walls, and by the gently churning chorus of burning pools behind him. He called out again several times, his voice becoming more and more broken with each heave of his lungs. Running to and fro, never straying too far from the crash, he yelled Tails' name over and over until he could simply no longer do so. His voice, now raspy and quiet, gasped out Tails' name one last time before breaking down on his hands and knees weeping before the dancing flames of the Tornado.

Softly Sonic's reddened eyes opened looking over the plated ground at all the scattered pieces of siding and internal components. One item of scrap that lay close beside him swiftly caught his attention. A larger sheet of painted red metal with two simply designed yellow tails stenciled upon it. Picking it up in his hands, Sonic recognized this part as the Tornado's rudder. He had helped Tails pick the design as a sort of signature for his then freshly completed biplane little more than a year ago. Sonic couldn't recall a moment that Tails seemed happier than the day he flew his finished creation for the first time.

A cruel twist, thought Sonic, that the physical keepsake best representing the joy of life that Tails possessed in abundance would simultaneously act as a memorial of his undue death. With the sheet of metal in his hands, Sonic rose to his feet and stared desolately into the flames. He could not find the body, but was now incurably convinced that there would be none to find. Shuddering, his grip tightened against the sheet of red metal.

"I'll make him pay what he did here today." Sonic growled quietly. "I promise you that Tails."

Sonic brimmed over with tears as he turned away from the blaze and began to run. He couldn't even bring his little brother home to be laid to rest, and the thought of leaving Tails in the deep dark of Robotropolis all by himself… it was simply too much for the grief stricken hedgehog to bear. Within a few minutes Sonic was leaving the city limits, rudder in hand. Knothole and an empty hut would be awaiting his return.

…

A flood of odd tasting air rushed noisily into Tails' lungs as he gasped upon waking up. His eyes darted left and right trying urgently to understand what was happening as bubbles seemed to fly away from his face and upward after exhaling. Tails first noticed that his limbs were all braced and restrained within large metal cylinders, rendering him completely immobile. After that, the fact that a mask with an attached tube had been strapped to his face over his muzzle became clear. It didn't muffle or gag him; rather it seemed quite cavernous with room for his lips to move freely and his breathing to be unchallenged. The last thing that finally struck the fox was that he had actually not been suspended in air. The mask was allowing him to breath inside of a tube filled with light blue tinted liquid.

Trying to see outside of the glass container proved difficult as its curve forced a kind of arc on the world which distorted accurate perception. The only things he could make out were bundles of wire hanging from the ceiling and steel plated floors all around him. Tails tried to struggle free of the restraints, but his left leg quickly reminded him of the importance of not doing anything too strenuous as it flared up with sharp stabbing pain. As he screamed, bubbles gushed out of small vents in the mask ascending past his eyes and towards the top of the tube.

"Ugh… Wh-where am I?!" The fox cried in confusion, his voice sounding slightly transmitted through the breather mask.

"Right where I want you." a spine chilling synthetic voice answered coldly.

Tails jerked his head to see who had spoken to him. Through the tube, the fox could see a semi-familiar form approaching; blue, with spines and shiny red shoes, yet something was off. As it came closer, the slender figure's image became less distorted by the curve of the glass. It was the robot from the wreck, the hedgehog look-alike that had so callously set Tails' bone by force before he passed out.

It walked right up to the tube placing a silver hand against the glass before allowing the intense light from its glowing red eyes to pierce the murky veil of the liquid. Tails whimpered in fear while the machine spoke to him; its voice low and cruel.

"I am going to exterminate every last one of your friends… and you are going to help me."


End file.
